Before Mercy
by Harold3456
Summary: The opening title card claims that No Mercy takes place 2 weeks after the initial infection. What happens inside those two weeks?
1. Day 4 - Zoey

**This is a story I originally wrote in 2008, back in high school. 2008 is pre-Sacrifice, naturally, so this story is going to have very little to do with those origins (although I changed as much as I could to mesh better with the Sacrifice).**

"Hold the elevator! Please!" The young woman called from across the lobby. Pizza under one arm, a veritable mountain of schoolbooks under the other, she jogged across the room as quickly as she could. Mr. Gutierrez, the middle-aged, Hispanic receptionist, could be seen suckling at his post, though the woman didn't notice.

Louis Randall reached out, stopping the closing elevator doors with his hand. The young woman smiled up at him as she hurried into the elevator. "Thanks," She panted.

"What floor?" Louis asked.

"Third," The woman replied. She leaned against the elevator wall, brushing brunette hair out of her eyes, and catching her breath.

Louis raised his eyebrows, intrigued. "Third? That's my floor! You just move here, or something?"

"Kinda," The young woman started readjusting the things she held in her arms. Louis grabbed the pizza. "Let me hold this for you," He said.

She smiled gratefully, blushing a little as she moved all of her school books into one hand. She then took back the pizza. "I'm staying with a friend for a couple weeks. Do you know Rachel Smith?"

"Yeah, I know Rachel." Louis replied. The elevator doors opened, and they both stepped out.

"I'm Zoey, by the way." The woman attempted to offer her hand, but gave up after nearly dropping her books.

Louis nodded a reply. "I'm Louis, pleased to meet you."

Smiling, and still blushing, Zoey walked down the hall to her door, which was four doors down from Louis'. The man approached his own door, taking out his key and unlocking it. He watched the young woman fumble with her lock before finally getting the key in. She cast him one final, awkward smile, and then disappeared into her room. Louis, smiling himself, walked into his house.

He lived in a spacious apartment, sparsely decorated with postmodern furniture from the Ikea catalogue. His living room was sunken half a foot. Doors to his right led to his bathroom and bedroom, and a kitchen and dining space stood on his left. Sliding glass doors led out to a deck, which looked out upon the streets of Fairfield, Pennsylvania. All in all, it was a fantastic abode, and had been a real steal at the price he had bought it for. His house was a large source of pride for him, and for that reason it was much tidier than the average bachelor's apartment would be. The only exception to this was the dining table, which had his laptop resting on it with a mess of cords.

Louis approached the table and dropped his suitcase on the chair. He also took off his black suit jacket, and hung it on the back of the chair. There was a mirror on the wall nearby, and he looked into it, smiling at his reflection.

A bald, twenty-six year old black man smiled back at him, wearing a white, buttoned shirt and red tie.

" 'I'm Louis, pleased to meet you' ", he repeated into the reflection, analyzing his face and body as he did so. "Think I made a good impression," he muttered, and then he turned away from the mirror.

Turning on the TV, Louis sank into a black, leather chair and relaxed. The news was on, and an attractive news lady was talking about a new strain of rabies that had been reported from a test monkey bite at a military testing facility. Louis paid this little mind, however, as his mind was on more important things.

He had started working out a few months ago, going so far as to buy an exercise machine for his room, and that hard work was obviously beginning to pay off. Over the course of the day he had gotten second glances from a couple of the attractive young interns, and he was sure that Zoey, this new girl in his building, had noticed. On a side note, his boss had commented on a noticeable improvement in his work, and hinted at a possible promotion to the management job. Nothing could bring Louis' day down, especially not killer rabies strains from half a state away, or whatever other depressing news the anchorman threw his way.

After the news, Louis pulled his laptop out of his suitcase and went to work on a side job he was doing for his boss, as a way of earning a little more favour. He was still in high spirits, and barrelled through the work, finishing earlier than expected. With time to kill, he sent an e-mail out to Florida, to touch base with his brother, and then surfed the Internet, all the while wondering if he should call Zoey. He had Rachel's number in his phone, from a night a few months previous when they had driven out to a party together; it was one of the only nights they had hung out as friends. Would it be an intrusion to call that number looking for her roommate? As Louis was puzzling over this, however, the situation resolved itself. There was a knock on his door.

"Louis? You home?" It was definitely Zoey; her voice was unmistakeable. Louis smiled to himself as he crossed the apartment to the door, and opened it.

Sure enough, Zoey was standing there, her hands clasped in front of her shyly. Her face was bright red.

"I was wondering if you'd like to come watch a couple movies with us," She said. Louis grinned. "Sure, that sounds great! I'll come right over."

Ten minutes later, he was in the apartment that Zoey was sharing with Rachel. Rachel was a thin, attractive blonde woman who appeared to be Zoey's age. When Louis asked, Rachel told him that she and Zoey went to high school together, before Rachel moved out to the city to pursue a career in modelling.

"What do you do, Zoey?" Louis asked. "Are you still in school?"

"I'm a freshman in university; Film major and Sociology minor." She replied. "What about you?"

"I'm a junior analyst for a major IT company." Louis replied, smiling at her uncomprehending expression. "Don't worry about it, _I_ don't even know what I do half the time."

Zoey and Rachel both seemed to find this highly amusing; they burst into hysterics. While their levity was definitely exaggerated, it helped ease the tension. Before today, Louis had never really spoken to Rachel, even though they had lived across from each other for a few months. The aforementioned party they had gone to had been that of a mutual acquaintance.

They talked for awhile longer, sharing pizza and some beer, and then settled down to watch some horror movies. Zoey and Rachel sat on each side of Louis on the couch; the entire atmosphere reminded him of the frat parties he went to in college.

Rachel was asleep after the first movie; a thriller where a masked knife murderer hunted down some schoolgirls. Zoey, a self-proclaimed horror-monger, started to nod off toward the middle of the second movie, which featured zombies overtaking a group of survivors in a mall.

Louis finally felt Zoey's head come to rest on his right shoulder as a snobby former mall manager's head was smashed like a melon onscreen, and he felt her breathing regulate in sleep shortly afterward. It was 2:30. Louis watched the movie to the bloody end, and then got up to leave, waking Zoey up in the process.

"I had fun," Louis told Zoey as he walked to the door. "We should do this again sometime."

She gave him an awkward hug, and then he went down the hall to his apartment. Wiped, he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Louis woke up at six the following morning, Tuesday. Pulling himself out of bed, he shut off his blaring alarm and got up to shower. In the bathroom, he stopped at the mirror to admire his muscular body, including a stomach which, although soft, was finally flat, with no traces of a gut.

_Better tone it down, Lou_, he thought as he showered himself. _The narcissism is bordering on self-obsession, now._

He hadn't gotten much sleep the last night, thanks to the girls next door. He'd had a great time, and the excursion was well worth it, but it still took a toll on his body and his spirits. "I'm not a kid anymore," he said to himself as he shaved. Looking at himself in the mirror afterward, with his sensible bald head, clean shaven features and wearing his work clothes, he realized just how distant his frat days had become. He felt a tinge of melancholy at this realization, but then quickly brushed it off. He may not be able to bounce back as well after a few beers, but the apartment and the respect he got on the street were well worth it. He whistled as he entered the elevator.

"Good morning, Louis." Mrs. Potts, the day receptionist, said as he exited the lobby.

"Morning," He replied, cutting the whistles off as soon as he saw the pounding rain outside. He didn't bring his umbrella, or a hat, and didn't want to go back up to get either. With a sigh, he stepped out into the rain, pulling the grey trench coat he wore tighter around him.

The city streets were nearly deserted. The people on the streets, bundled in jackets or hunched under umbrellas, were hurrying to and fro.

"Taxi!" Louis called, hailing the yellow cab that was approaching. The vehicle sped up, driving past him. He muttered a curse, and waited for the next cab to come by.

It was ten minutes until he managed to find a ride, but the dry interior of the taxicab was a welcome reprieve to the wet weather outside. Wiping his soaked, bald head with an equally wet sleeve, Louis gave the cab driver the directions to his workplace. The cab driver uttered an affirmation, and then turned on the radio.

"_This new strain of rabies seems to be more serious than the authorities previously thought, with the estimated 5% mortality rate among humans actually being closer to 20%. Mercy Hospital has recently been closed to the public, to serve as a quarantined care center for those who have been infected with the strain, and to serve as a potential headquarters while scientists work to find a cure..."_

"There any music stations on there?" Louis asked the cab driver. "This rabies virus is all I've been hearing about for days."

"This is a music station, my friend." The cabbie replied. "They've been putting PSA's out over almost every bandwidth." Nevertheless, he changed to a smooth jazz station, and soon a lone saxophone was serenading the cab space.

"That's better than nothing, I guess." Louis muttered to himself, staring out at the stormy street. He noticed it seemed quite deserted for a weekday, but chalked it up to the storm.

The rest of the day went by slowly and painfully, and yesterday's successes were soon rendered a bitter, sad memory. To thank Louis for taking on the side project and going to it with such enthusiasm and efficiency, the boss assigned him three more projects to be completed by the end of the week, on top of his normal work load. One of the pretty female interns came down with some kind of illness and didn't show up to work. The other intern showed up, but she, too, appeared to be very sick, showing flu-like symptoms. Not wanting to catch any kind of infection with such a cumbersome workload on his shoulders, Louis avoided her all day, despite how much he needed the ego boost her compliments gave him.

Louis was in a bad mood when he taxied home. He didn't run into Zoey in the lobby or hallway, and locked himself in his apartment all evening, slugging away at the work that he had been given. He could hear the television in the background.

_"The more we know about this rabies virus, which scientists have dubbed the Green Flu, the better equipped we will be to combat it. It's been confirmed that Green has been released into the general population. Its early stages can be recognized through symptoms similar to those of a common cold or a flu. As the virus progresses, however, other symptoms will exhibit themselves. These other symptoms include depression, agitation, shortness of temper and, in some cases, acute insanity. Authorities are doing all they can to contain the virus, but at this stage it is up to the public to take pains to protect themselves, including washing your hands several times daily. If you start to exhibit symptoms of Green, it is crucial that you make as little human contact as possible, and report yourself to the nearest hospital or medical center..."_

Louis shut the TV off, and turned on the radio to an all-music satellite station, where he was treated to soft alt-rock.

There was a knock on the door. Peering through the peephole, Louis saw Zoey standing outside, fidgeting and staring at the floor, her features grotesquely distorted through the convex lens.

Louis opened the door. "Hello," He said, forcing a smile.

"Hi," Zoey replied, brushing her hair out of her eyes and kicking one of her feet nervously. "I was wondering if, maybe, you wanted to go out for a coffee or something?"

"That would be great!" Louis replied, forcing his smile into a grin. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass. My boss has swamped me with work." His grin became apologetic. "Can I take a raincheck though? Tomorrow, perhaps?"

"Oh," Disappointment crossed Zoey's face, but she forced a smile of her own anyway. "Yeah, I understand. Tomorrow sounds good!"

With a quick goodbye he shut the door on her, and then rested his head on the wooden surface and groaned in aggravation. He turned to his laptop, sitting on the dining table. The sleek, chrome device was flipped open. Lines of documentation seemed to gaze at him mockingly. He loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and prepared to get to work. "At least," he muttered as he crossed the spacious, beautifully-maintained apartment, "this week can't get any worse."

He would never have been able to comprehend how wrong that statement was.


	2. Day 7 - A Bad Work Day

They didn't go out the next day, or the day after that. In addition to the projects that were being heaped on him, Louis' boss also gave him the work that the interns – both of whom were home sick at this point – could not do. The rain didn't let up all week; neither did the Green updates. The symptoms being reported now included schizophrenia, and a complete nervous breakdown. Louis watched news footage of a Green-afflicted man who had a panic attack while driving a bus, and then crashed it into oncoming traffic. The scene replayed on the news time and again. Some people were getting dangerous, as well, and there were reports of attacks on the streets in broad daylight. A couple was killed in the park on Thursday evening.

The next time Louis saw Zoey was Thursday night, and it was completely by accident. He had been entering his apartment at the same time that Zoey had been leaving hers. Louis saw that the girl looked worried, so he approached her. "What's up?" He asked, trying to sound cheerful. "I'm sorry I couldn't see you this week, but do you want to go out and do something now?"

Zoey shook her head. "I can't. Rachel's sick. I think it's Green." She whispered this last sentence, as if it could be caught simply by mentioning it. Louis' eyebrows furrowed as he thought about this; the Green virus, in his own building? The virus had definitely been spreading to all corners of the city; while the more extreme cases seemed to still be few and far between, half of Louis' coworkers were out with flu symptoms.

Seeing the worry in Zoey's eyes, however, made Louis forget about his own fears for the time being. "I want you to be extra careful, Zoey." He said. "You heard the stories on the news."

"It's not that bad," Zoey replied, although now tears threatened to flow from her eyes. "I don't think she has it as bad as the others did. Not yet, at least."

The Green Flu; for the past week, it had meant nothing more to Louis than news-saturation and a larger-than-average workload. The fact that it could be in his own building, among his friends, drove the point home to him suddenly and ruthlessly; _This is real._ "Did you call the hospital?"

"Mercy Hospital is full, and all of the clinics have long waiting lists. We're on our own." The tears finally came. Louis immediately moved to comfort her, wrapping his arms around her and leading her into his apartment where he sat her down on the leather couch.

"I'm sorry, Louis, I'm just really worried about this." Zoey sobbed. "What if she dies? There have been deaths!"

Louis wanted to give Zoey reassurance, but he knew that his promises would sound as transparent to her as he knew them to be. "I have some flu medicine in my cabinet," Louis said finally, after a brief pause. "I want you to take it over to her, and make her take it. I'll make some soup for her, and bring it over. Sound good?" He gave Zoey a smile. She nodded, and smiled back. "Yeah."

Louis led her back to the door, handing her some bottles of pills and liquid medications from the bathroom.

"Thanks, for everything." Zoey said as she left the room.

When she closed the door, and Louis was alone once again, he immediately hurried to his laptop and looked up the Green Flu. After a few minutes he got up and prepared the soup broth, and while it was boiling he soaked up every bit of information about the virus. It was airborne like the flu – that much he knew already. Although the symptoms matched those of typical strains of influenza and rabies, the resulting mood swings and mental disorders caused by the Green Flu were far more dangerous. Louis clicked into articles describing attacks where the afflicted person bit out the jugular of his unsuspecting mother, somewhere out in Boston. Louis shuddered, thinking about the attack that had occurred just down the road over the last few days – the couple in the park. He then thought of the zombie movie he had watched with Zoey and Rachel, and it brought a chill to his heart. Were they on the verge of a zombie apocalypse?

Louis forced a barking laugh, telling himself he was crazy as he got up to check the soup. He noticed for the first time how dark it was in his apartment, however, and he turned on every light he passed from the dining room table to the stove. He got the soup, and put it in a large Tupperware contained to bring over to Zoey.

Louis walked out into the hallway, and over to Zoey's door. He raised his fist to knock when the elevator doors opened down the hall, and a familiar woman stepped out.

"Hello, Mrs. Wilson." Louis called to the elderly woman who stepped out of the elevator.

"Shut up!" Mrs. Wilson snapped back, covering her ears with her hands and letting out a small whimper as she took small strides to her door, which was the first one on her right. Louis, stunned by the ferocity of the normally docile old woman, watched as she fidgeted her key, unsuccessfully jamming it at the lock. Finally, she dropped the key onto the carpeted floor.

Louis strode down the hall toward her. "Here, Mrs. Wilson, let me-"

She turned and snarled at him, and the look that she cast his way was rent with such pain and anger that, despite her size and frailty, Louis slowed in his tracks.

"Take my bags..." Mrs. Wilson muttered to herself, bending down and picking up the key. "I'll show them... Only one at a time... I'll show them..."

Louis gave a light knock on Zoey's door, and then entered unbidden. "I-I've got the soup," He called. He was still shaken from the encounter with Mrs. Wilson, who had finally shut herself away into her own room.

Zoey was sitting on the couch, watching TV. Her eyes were dry, but he could tell that she had been crying. She looked weary. She was still wearing her pink sweater, although it was quite warm in the room.

"How is she?" Louis asked, closing the door behind him and going to sit next to Zoey. She shook her head. "Rachel's been crying since I came back, but when I went into her room to check on her, she started screaming and flailing. I've never seen her like this, Louis."

Louis glanced over at Rachel's bedroom door. Sure enough, light sobs could be heard from within. "Did she take the medicine?"

"I left it with her, but... I don't know."

"I think I'll check up on her." Louis said, getting up. Zoey also got to her feet. "No, let me do it!"

"You've done enough for one day," he replied. "Let me handle it." He smiled reassuringly.

Zoey sat back down, with concern evident on her face. On the television screen, they were replaying the footage of the kamikaze driver crashing into a shop window.

Louis approached the door, trying not to let his apprehension show on his face. The whole room was dark; the only light came from the television screen and the stove light across the room. Shadows played across the white bedroom door as Louis reached for the knob. Behind the door, the cries seemed to be getting louder.

Louis knocked lightly on the door. "Rachel? It's me, Louis. Can I come in?"

The crying continued. Louis turned the doorknob, and pushed open the door.

The bedroom was pink, lit up by a lamp at Rachel's bedside. Rachel was lying on top of the covers in the fetal position with her hands over her head, crying loudly. She wore only her underwear. Louis averted his eyes as he approached her.

Louis put the soup down on the bedside table, next to the unopened bottles of pills and the untouched glass of water. Rachel didn't even acknowledge his presence.

"R-Raich?" Louis whispered, wincing at the tremor in his voice.

Rachel stopped crying, and her eyes opened. She looked up at Louis, giving him a look of sheer pain. She sniffled loudly, and brought her hands down from her face. "Louis..." She said the name slowly, as if hearing it for the first time. "Lew...iss..."

"I need you to take your medicine, Rachel." Louis said. "Here," He popped the cap on the bottle of Tylenol, and took a couple of pills out, putting them on the table next to the glass of water and the soup. "You need to eat up, as well, if you want to get better."

With shaking hands, Rachel pulled herself up to a seated position.

"Zoey's really worried about you," Louis said to Rachel. He saw a door nearby, which led into an adjoining bathroom, and went to get Rachel a cold cloth. "Can you do it for Zoey? Please?"

"Zow...ee." Rachel screamed suddenly. Louis whirled around, to see her lying on her back on the bed, her hands clasped over her ears, kicking in the air with her long, model's legs. Her eyes were squeezed shut.

Zoey appeared in the bedroom door. "What's wrong with her?" She cried.

Louis ran to Rachel's side, grabbing the young woman's shoulders to steady her.

"No more! No more!" Rachel cried. She flailed out with her arms, striking the lamp and the glass of water. The water spilled all over the carpet, while the lamp struck the wall. Darkness filled the room, with the only light coming from the two open doors.

"Zoey! Turn on the light!" Louis shouted. Zoey flicked on the bedroom light, and Rachel's eyes suddenly opened wide. Her eyes appeared to be rolled up, so only the whites were visible, and she started snapping at Louis' arms with her teeth. He was still holding her shoulders, however, rendering her attack futile.

Rachel brought her hands up, and started slapping at Louis' face and body. Louis released her, and quickly backed off across the room. Rachel continued to flail on the bed for a minute, and then she went limp. Her screams died down into pathetic sobs.

Zoey was still standing in the doorway. Her tears had started up again. "Oh, God, Rachel... What's happening? Something's seriously wrong with her..."

Louis wrapped his arm around Zoey's shoulders, and led her to the couch, making sure to close Rachel's door behind him.

"You shouldn't be here alone," he said to her when he got her seated. "I'm going to stay here with you tonight." He kept some distance from Zoey, as if she would be able to hear how fast his heart was pounding. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, almost like some kind of buried serpent was slowly uncoiling within him; that serpent was Instinct, and it was hissing in his ears, _"It's all gone South, man, and you're going along for the ride!"_

Louis mentally vanquished this voice, and urged the serpent to lie once more. Zoey was barely out of her teens and had her nose in horror movies, and yet _he_ was the one who was getting spooked! _I'm an adult, damn it!_ Nevertheless, he felt he couldn't ignore instinct completely. There was something he needed at his apartment. "Just... uh... let me go grab something quickly," he stammered to Zoey.

She nodded distractedly, not taking her eyes off the TV. It was showing new footage now, from a helicopter, of a mob of patients on the roof of Mercy Hospital. Louis didn't want to know what the footage implied, but he couldn't ignore the TV anchor as he headed for the door.

"_Hell has broken loose at Mercy Hospital, where the patients appeared to have revolted in an angry, out of control mob, massacring the doctors and military personnel present before spilling out onto the streets and rooftops. Police are hunting down the runaway patients, with orders to use force if necessary..."_

Louis stepped out of Rachel's apartment and walked down to his own room. He was hesitant to leave Zoey even for an instant, but there was something he needed to grab from his room. He walked into his bathroom, collecting his shaving kit and toothbrush, and then headed into his bedroom. He opened his closet, digging through a pile of junk and assorted shoes for a small, wooden box. He retrieved the box, and opened it on his bed. Within the box lay a holstered Colt 1911 pistol, a gift from his overbearing mother when he left home to live in the big city. There were also two full magazines in the box.

Louis clipped the holster to his belt. He felt foolish standing there in his dress pants and work shirt, with the gun hanging off his hip like some kind of post-modern, white collar cowboy. "What am I doing?" He asked aloud. He put his hand on the butt of the pistol, preparing to discard it, but found himself unable to. _Just a precaution. Just a precaution_. Instead, he grabbed the suit jacket he had tossed on his chair just a few hours earlier, and put it on to conceal the gun.

Louis looked at himself in the mirror again. Just a few days ago he had felt like a million bucks; handsome, young, and fit. Now he looked pale, wan, and frightened. There were bags under his eyes from the stress of the last few days, his boss overworking him, and the events of the last few hours.

Louis saw some slight movement in the mirror, somewhere behind him. He realized it was the brass of his doorknob, flickering in the light. The front door to his apartment, which he had left ajar, was swinging open.

"Zoey?" Louis called, turning to face his bedroom door. "Zoey, is that you?"

He reached under his jacket and undid the clip that held his holster shut, wrapping his hand around the handle of the gun. He fired pistols and Uzis occasionally in the firing range in his spare time, but he was not ready to use the weapon on another person. His heart thudded loudly in his chest.

"Zoey?" He repeated, his voice coming out strained and high pitched. He took a step closer to the door.

There was movement outside; the definite sound of feet scuffling on hardwood. Whoever it was definitely wasn't wearing shoes. Louis stepped into the doorway of the bedroom. He saw a man standing in his dining room, illuminated by the numerous lights that Louis had turned on earlier. The man was balding and overweight, and wore only a pair of white briefs. Even from the back, Louis recognized his landlord, Lawrence Keitel.

"Mr. Keitel?"

The man spun around, as if startled, to face Louis. Louis looked into the man's face, and his grip immediately tightened on the pistol.

Lawrence Keitel's right eye was bruised and swollen, and dried blood covered his mouth. Only the whites of his eyes were visible.

Keitel let out a cat-like hiss when he saw Louis, and he immediately sprinted at the young man. Louis didn't need to think twice; Keitel hadn't even taken two steps when Louis pulled the Colt out of its holster and pulled the trigger.

The bullet caught Keitel in the left cheek, causing him to stumble backwards. Keitel reached for something to steady himself; he toppled over Louis' table, sending a laptop, salt and pepper shakers and a napkin holder scattering across the room. Keitel fell to the ground, his right leg gave a twitch, and then he was still. A pool of blood started spreading across the hardwood floor.

"Shit," Louis muttered to himself. The hand that held the pistol shook violently, and he lowered the weapon. "Oh, shit!"

A car alarm went off somewhere outside, causing Louis to jump. A sudden wave of nausea swept over him, and he turned around and ran into the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet.

When he finished vomiting, he flushed and then looked at himself in the mirror. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes were wide with horror. _I just killed a man. _The thought looped in his mind, over and over again. _I'm a murderer._

"I did what I had to do. It was self defence."

_Against a fat, middle-aged man?_

"No." The eyes. The slavering jaws. The shambling, uneven gait... "Against a-"

_Don't. Don't say it. Don't fucking say it, Lou._

"Louis?" Zoey called from the other room. "Louis, are you okay?" Her voice sounded shrill, and frightened. She had obviously heard the gunshot; it would have been impossible not to.

"I-I'm fine!" Louis called back, his voice cracking. "I'll be right there!"

He hurried out of the bathroom, and stumbled across the room to the exit. He only hesitated when he reached his doorway. Louis turned and took one, final look at his apartment. He saw the clean, leather furniture, the hardwood floors, the stained cherry kitchen cupboards. . . it was a beautiful, spacious place, and he felt a pang in his chest as he surveyed it. Then he saw Keitel lying on the floor, his balding head twisted away from Louis, with blood and brain matter flowing from that gaping wound. The grotesquery seemed to offset the whole scene. Gorge threatening to rise yet again, Louis slammed the door.

"_People are evacuating the city in massive numbers, clogging and congesting all major roadways. The military recommends anybody remaining in the city avoid these major routes, which have become impossibly congested, and travel to one of the evacuation stations posted at the bottom of the screen..."_

Rachel's apartment was still dark. Zoey stood outside Rachel's bedroom door, listening to her friend. Even from where he stood, Louis heard Rachel's throaty, rasping sobs. The poor girl was undoubtedly straining her throat, and the sounds were becoming guttural and inhuman. Thinking of Keitel, and those milky white eyes, Louis shuddered.

"Get away from the door, Zoey." Louis said, moving to the nearest lamp and turning it on. Zoey turned to him, and relief spilled over her face at the sight of him. Then she saw the pistol still in his hand. "What is that for?" She demanded. "What was that gunshot? Did you shoot somebody?"

Five minutes ago, Louis had felt silly just having the gun on his person. In a short chronological span, the weapon's utility had made the leap from fantasy to hard reality in the worst way. Louis felt the shakes come over him once again, and sat on the couch. He put the gun on the coffee table and buried his head in his hands.

"L-Louis? Did you shoot someone?" Zoey sounded scared again.

"I did what I had to," Louis replied through his hands. "He was infected. He was one of Them." Louis nodded at the television screen, which was replaying the footage of the infected mob on the Mercy Hospital rooftop. Closer inspection revealed large, bloody stains all over their hospital shirts and mouths.

"What are they?" Zoey asked.

Louis met her eyes, and held her stare. "I think they're zombies, Zoey."

From the bedroom, Rachel emitted a throaty growl, which broke down into more sobs.

"No, it can't be!"

"I think we need to get away from here, Zoey. The other uninfected people are leaving the city, and I think we should, too."

"What about Rachel?"

Louis broke her gaze, and looked at the floor. "Her, too. She isn't as far gone – I think, but she's not as far gone."

"She's my best friend, Louis! I can't just leave her here by herself! Not in the condition she's in!"

"She's turning, Zoey. I'm sorry, but we can't take her with us. Just keeping her around here is dangerous enough! We're lucky we haven't caught it!"

Zoey walked over to the fridge and pulled a photo off of it. Even from where he sat, Louis could see that it was a picture of Rachel and Zoey at some kind of ceremony, probably high school graduation. Zoey put the picture down on the kitchen counter, and then buried her face into her hands and sobbed. Louis rose to comfort her, hesitated, and then sat back down, deciding she would probably rather be alone. He was still practically a stranger to her, and he was telling her to leave with him and abandon her dying friend.

She looked up at him. "I need to see her, though."

"Don't..." Louis warned, but Zoey cut him off. "No! You have a hunch, Louis, that's all! I'm not writing my best friend off on that! Maybe... maybe she has a weaker form of it." There was no hope in Zoey's voice as she stared at Rachel's bedroom door.

"Let me," Louis said to her, although his heart clenched fearfully in his chest as he said it. "Let me see her."

"No," Zoey replied, "it has to be me." She took a step toward Rachel's door, hesitated, and then opened a nearby drawer and pulled out a knife. She didn't look at Louis as she did so, and he wondered if she felt as ridiculous with the knife as he'd felt with the gun.

She crossed the distance to the bedroom slowly, and then leaned against the door, resting a hand on the knob. "Rachel? Raich? It's me. It's Zoey."

The whimper that came from the other side of the door was heartbreaking. "Zo..." Rachel cried out, her voice strained and anguished. "Why is this happening?"

The tears streamed down Zoey's face now, and she wiped her nose with her knife hand. "You're going to be okay, Raich. I'm right here."

"Help me, Zoey!" Rachel cried. Zoey relaxed a bit, and then turned the doorknob and started to push the door open. Rachel screamed, and slammed the door shut in her face. "The voices!" Rachel screamed. "The fucking voices!" She pounded on the other side of the door with her fists. "I see him, Zoey!" She shouted. "I can see his teeth, and they're sharp! Run, Zoey, I can't hold him!" She screamed again, a shrill, ear-piercing sound, and Zoey stumbled away from the door and into Louis' arms, dropping the knife as she did so.

The two watched the door rattle for a minute, saying nothing, and then the screams died back down to sobs and the apartment was still once more.

"You're right," Zoey whispered. "Rachel's becoming one of them. The friend I knew is gone, and if we stay here with her any longer, we'll only be putting ourselves in more danger."

"We should head for the subway, the news says they're still evacuating through the tunnels. It's only a couple blocks down the street!"

"What do we do about..." Zoey's voice cracked, and she nodded toward the bedroom, where Rachel had finally quieted down. Louis looked over at the pistol, which still lay on the coffee table.

"No!" Zoey exclaimed. "No, you can't! You can't just put her down like a dog!"

Louis paused, and thought it over. Zoey was right; he had shot Larry Keitel in self defence – what criminologists _(and prosecutors_, his brain added) called a _hot-blooded _murder. He couldn't possibly shoot somebody who wasn't a serious and immediate threat to him, no matter what their condition. On the other hand, it would be on his conscience if she managed to break out of the apartment, and killed somebody else...

Louis wondered who else in the building was infected, and who wasn't. Whose families had just locked their infected family members in their rooms, and tried to pretend that they were doing the right thing?

"Louis, we aren't killing her." Zoey said, and now her voice sounded firm and indignant. "We will leave her behind, and we will lock her in her room, but we aren't going to shoot her. If you shoot her, I'm leaving you."

Louis didn't want to be alone at a time like this. Zoey was familiar, Zoey was _real_. "Yeah, you're right. I don't want to kill anybody, Zoey."

Zoey put on her pink hoodie. "Let's just get out of here." She choked.

They left the apartment quietly; Louis holding the gun, Zoey close behind. Louis looked one way down the hall, then the other, pistol raised. _Fifteen minutes,_ he thought to himself, _fifteen minutes ago I crossed this hallway with soup_. The coast was clear, and they walked toward the elevator.

Louis noticed three open doors between them and the elevator, including Mrs. Wilson's door. Remembering the state that she had been in when he had last seen her, Louis felt a sudden chill.

"Watch our backs," Louis whispered to Zoey. He approached the first open door, and quietly reached for the knob. Grabbing it, he shut the door. The last thing they needed was to be jumped from a dark apartment.

They advanced toward the elevator slowly, and Louis closed all the doors without incident. They could hear growls and the sound of objects being thrown about behind one of the closed doors. They stayed quiet, however, and passed the door without confrontation.

Louis called the elevator as soon as they reached it, and then they waited, listening as it rose from the lobby to receive them.

The chrome elevator doors opened, and Louis and Zoey both cried out at the sight inside. A headless corpse lay inside, leaning against the far wall. Skull and brain matter were splattered on the wall behind her, and there was blood spatters everywhere in the elevator. Louis couldn't be sure, but judging by the dress she was wearing he guessed that it was Mrs. Wilson.

"On s-second thought, I think... let's just take the stairs." Zoey whispered. Louis nodded.

They found the stairs nearby, and hurried down to the lobby level. When they reached the door into the lobby, Louis held up a finger for silence. Then he glanced through the small window that was inset into the door. He could see the front lobby doors, with chairs propped up against them, barricading them shut. The couch was pushed up against the window, although that didn't do anything to brace it. The room seemed to be empty.

Louis pushed open the door, and stepped out, quickly sweeping all uncovered areas with the pistol. The room was completely empty. Louis lowered the gun, and then motioned to Zoey.

A man's head suddenly appeared from behind the counter. Before Louis could raise his weapon, however, he heard the sound of a shotgun being pumped.

"Are you infected?" Mr. Gutierrez, the night receptionist, demanded. He was pointing a shotgun right at Louis' head. Stunned, Louis could only shake his head.

"Not good enough!" Mr. Gutierrez shouted, shaking the shotgun. "Say something!"

"We aren't infected!" Zoey cried, stepping out into the lobby with her hands raised. "Please, we just want to get out of the city. Can you put the gun away?"

Mr. Gutierrez lowered the shotgun, but he didn't put it down. "I can hear them up there," he said. "Is it bad up there, Louis?"

"Yeah, it's bad." Louis replied.

"Things are pretty fucked up." Mr. Gutierrez ran a hand through his thinning hair. "You won't believe who came down here in the elevator."

"Mrs. Wilson?"

Mr. Gutierrez nodded. "Yep, kindly old Mrs. Wilson. Those doors opened, and she gave the most horrible howl." The tall, thin man shuddered. "I've worked here a long time, Louis. I've spoken to a lot of people from behind this desk, but she was definitely the sweetest." He swallowed back a sob.

Zoey walked across the room to the glass doors, and looked out. "Oh my God," She muttered. "Louis, come look at this!"

Louis went to Zoey's side. The scene outside was chaos. There were bodies strewn about, and an overturned cab rested in the middle of the street. With the road blocked, many other people had simply abandoned their vehicles, leaving doors open and everything. Louis saw a rabid woman inside the back seat of the police car, beating her hands furiously on the windows. A female police officer was in the front seat, her head against the bloodied windshield, either unconscious or dead.

There was a dinging sound behind them, and the three survivors all turned. The elevator had just come down to the lobby, and now the doors were opening. Rachel stood inside. Her hair was a complete mess, and the top half of her face was covered by bedraggled bangs. Her cheeks glistened from the tears. She still wore only her underwear. Her bare feet were red, from standing in a pool of Mrs. Wilson's blood.

"Rachel..." Zoey muttered, taking a hesitant step forward.

Rachel let out a long, loud cry, and then bolted straight at Zoey. Mr. Gutierrez fired his shotgun. The shot missed Rachel's head, but a picture frame hanging on the opposite wall burst into pieces.

Louis shoved Zoey out of the way, raising the Colt, but it was too late. Rachel struck him at full speed. They both fell back, knocking over the barricades and pushing the hotel door open. Louis landed on his back on the sidewalk, with Rachel on top of him. She started snapping at his throat. He grabbed her shoulders, trying to hold her back, but she was surprisingly strong.

Hands grabbed Rachel by the shoulders, and Louis felt her weight leave his body. Zoey had grabbed the infected girl, and pulled her off of Louis. Off balance, Rachel stumbled onto her back.

Louis clambered to his feet, grabbing the pistol and pointing it at her. Rachel was already getting back to her feet. Her hair had been shoved out of her face, and Louis could see into her eyes now. He saw no sign of the old Rachel inside them; no recognition, no familiarity. Her face, the smooth, fine-boned face of a model, now seemed distorted and grotesque. Rachel was definitely dead; in her final throes of sickness, she had clung to her humanity like a dying man clinging to a piece of driftwood; the Green Flu had finally pulled her beneath the surface, and she was drowned.

"For God's sake, shoot her!" Zoey screamed. Louis pulled the trigger, the gunshot cracked in the air, and then Rachel was still. She lay sprawled on her back, a bullet in her heart.

Mr. Gutierrez hurried to the doorway, looking down at Rachel. "Poor girl," he said, crossing himself with his free hand.

Zoey burst into fresh tears. Louis hugged her, pressing her head into his jacket to shield her from the sight.

"We should get back inside," Mr. Gutierrez said, "and put the barricades back up."

"We're going to the subway," Louis told him, "while we still can. I think it's going to get a lot worse in the next few days."

"Good luck to you, then." Mr. Gutierrez said, with a friendly smile and a nod.

"You should come with us!"

"No, my place is here. I have food, water, and my tenants." Mr. Gutierrez touched his hand to his nametag, pinned on his chest.

"Do me a favour," Zoey said, taking her face out of Louis' jacket to face the receptionist. "Put a blanket over her, or something," she motioned to Rachel's body, sprawled nearly naked on the street. "She didn't deserve to go like this."

"I will. I promise." Mr. Gutierrez said with a nod. There were gunshots in the distance, down the road. Mr. Gutierrez backed into the building. "Godspeed, and good luck." He said.

"You, too." Louis nodded, and then the apartment doors closed, and Mr. Gutierrez put the chairs back in place. They were weak barricades, and wouldn't hold up to any kind of attack. The old man, in his uniform, gave off the appearance of a captain going down with his sinking ship. A_ good metaphor_, thought Louis as they continued forth, and Gutierrez disappeared from view. _He's the captain of the ship, and we're the rats trying to jump off it._ He tried not to think of which one had the better chance of survival.


	3. Day 7 pt 2 - Zombie Neighbours

Louis wrapped an arm around Zoey's shoulder, and guided her down the street. His heart was pounding. Up ahead at the intersection he saw a group of people running down the cross street. He couldn't tell if they were rabid or just panicked. The occasional crashed or abandoned vehicle cluttered the streets, making automotive transportation difficult. Nevertheless, a bold taxi driver sped past Louis, narrowly squeezing through the gap between an abandoned pickup and a fire hydrant. He was headed toward the center of the city.

A chill wind picked up, and Louis shivered. He still wore his black suit jacket, but it did little to protect him from the biting breeze. Beside him, Zoey also shivered.

"At least it isn't raining," Louis offered, but that little shred of optimism did nothing to warm either of them.

"How far is it to the subways?" Zoey asked.

"It's just a little farther up this street." Louis replied. From where he stood, he could see the subway entrance a block away. There was a small mob of people gathered around it, making Louis uneasy. He expected there to be people at such a public evacuation zone, but from this distance he couldn't tell if these were rabid or not. He quickened his pace.

As they neared, Louis' fears were eased at the sight of a mother and child at the back of the mob, huddled together, seemingly providing each other comfort and warmth. He doubted that rabid people did that.

"Something isn't right," Zoey said, nonetheless.

"What's going on?" Louis asked an Asian man in a business suit standing near the back of the crowd.

"They aren't letting us in!" He exclaimed. "They said they're blocking off the subway! They're telling us to take the bridge!"

"That's in the opposite direction!" Zoey cried, looking back the way they had come.

"I just came from there!" The mother, lying against a parked car with her child, added. "It's chaos! They aren't letting people through there, either!"

Louis looked from face to face, and then down into the subway entrance. A cage was erected across the stairs halfway down, and two soldiers were standing on the other side – the safe side. About ten people were massed against the cage, all shouting pleas and insults. A woman in an expensive looking suit was waving money in front of a soldier's face.

"Wait here," Louis said to Zoey, quickly shoving his way through the mob to the front. He pushed past two men, squeezing in beside the woman in the suit.

"Three thousand dollars! I'll give you three thousand dollars if you let me in! I'm not infected, I promise! Do you see any symptoms? Check my eyes, do they look rabid?" She was pulling her eyes wide open for the soldiers to see. The nearest soldier was paying her little attention.

"Excuse me? Excuse me!" Louis shouted, waving his hand at the nearby soldier. "What's going on? Why can't we get through here?"

"I'm sorry, sir, they're shutting down the subway tunnels. You'll have to go to one of the designated evacuation zones, or take one of the bridges-"

"This _is_ a designated evacuation zone!" Louis shouted back. "Your own military told me to come here!"

"The nearest evacuation zones are located at Falkner Bridge, Portland Bridge, Route 17..."

"Those are all the way across the damn city!"

"Please..." The woman pleaded, "take my money. Take it, it's yours!" She was pressing the thick stack of hundreds against the bars desperately. The soldier ignored her.

"Hey, assholes! You're letting my son die!" The mother shouted from up the stairs. Louis turned around to look back at her. Zoey still stood beside her, along with the Asian man. In total, there were about twenty people massed around the subway entrance.

"There's just a few of us," Louis attempted, pushing past the wealthy woman to stand right before the cage. "You can check us for infection and everything! Just let us in, and close up behind us."

The soldier raised his assault rifle then, pointing it at Louis. "I'm going to have to ask you to step away. This zone is closed. Head to the next one."

"This is bullshit, man!" Louis exclaimed, slamming the cage with his hands in frustration. Turning, he started shoving past the others, on his way back up.

There was a shrill, feminine scream behind him, and a sudden cacophony of rattling metal. He turned around, in time to see the soldier's rifle barrel light up. Two bursts of bullets were fired, and the woman in the suit staggered backward, doubled over, clutching her stomach. A rain of hundred dollar bills landed on the ground all around her, and she fell on her back on the stairs.

"Holy shit!" One of the soldiers, the one Louis hadn't been talking to, exclaimed. "You fucking shot the bitch!"

The other soldier could only stare, mouth agape. "She charged us, man! She was screaming!"

"You killed her!"

"She charged the cage! She charged..."

The soldier's excuses were lost amidst the sounds of the mob. People were rushing to help the woman, people were running away, some people stayed at the cage in the hopes that they would be let through. Louis joined Zoey, who was staring in wide-eyed shock.

"Let's go," Louis said. Zoey continued to simply stare at the woman, who was mortally wounded, and moaning pitifully.

"I said let's go," Louis repeated, more aggressively. He grabbed Zoey's hand, and pulled her away from the subway entrance, leading her down the road.

"Where are we going?" Zoey asked. Louis didn't respond, he just continued pulling her.

"Louis, where are we going?" Zoey repeated. He quickened his pace and tightened his grip. Zoey gave a forceful pull, and freed her hand from his. "Where are we going? Louis, do you have a plan?"

Louis looked back at the subway entrance, half a block away, and then shook his head. "I don't know! I don't know where we're going! I need some time to think, damn it!" Louis leaned against the window of a store, and then sank to the sidewalk, burying his head in his hands. "We can't take the bridges. Falkner is flooded with people, and I'm sure Portland is no different. The crowds will be too large, and I have the feeling they're going to be more of..." He gestured in the direction of the subway and the dead woman. "And if any place is going to be overrun, that'll be it. I can imagine Route 17 is no different. And we can't return home." Louis shut his eyes, and imagined the apartment, with his neighbours' bodies lying everywhere. "We should find a television, or a computer, and see if there are any other options."

There were more gunshots downtown; they sounded like they were coming from assault rifles. Louis and Zoey heard screams. The gunshots died down.

Zoey sat down beside Louis, leaning her head back against the brick wall and shutting her eyes. "I think maybe we should find a place to rest, Louis. We'll lock up somewhere for the night, and we can make these plans in the morning, when we're fresh."

Louis shook his head. "This is the best chance we've got, Zoey. Tonight. If we don't find a way out of here soon, we will be stranded in the city. This is just the beginning. Right now, most of the infected are in their houses, either trapped or in their final stages of turning. By tomorrow, they will be everywhere."

Zoey brushed a lock of hair out of her face, and shivered. She looked spent already, that was for sure. Louis got to his feet, and then helped her up. "There's a library up the road. It has Internet. We should go there first."

More gunshots suddenly erupted, not far away. Instinctively, Louis and Zoey both ducked.

A man ran into the middle of the intersection from the perpendicular street. He fired the two pistols in his hands at unseen foes around the corner. Seconds later, a small mob of infected appeared from around the corner. Screaming, the man continued to fire his pistols, felling a few of the infected, and then they were on him. Louis cringed as he watched the zombies swarm the unfortunate man, and start pulling him apart.

"Jesus Christ," Zoey muttered, turning away from the carnage and retching.

Louis continued to watch, unable to tear his eyes away from the scene, as five infected men and women rose from the bloody remains of their prey. Their clothes, faces and hands were stained with blood. As one, they all turned to look down the street Louis and Zoey were on.

Louis slowly reached out and touched Zoey's back. "Don't move," He whispered. "Don't make a sound."

The mob charged down the road, and the pair ducked behind a nearby car as they ran past, heading in the direction of the subway entrance. He hoped that the survivors assembled around the entrance had dispersed, or they were going to be massacred.

"Are you okay?" Louis asked Zoey, a minute later. She straightened up, and nodded.

They headed down the street, in the direction of the library, trying to look away from the massacred corpse of the other man. He had felled four infected before going down – _damn, were they fast_.

They reached the library, to find it closed. Inside, it was completely dark. One of the glass doors had been shattered, however. After a hesitation, Louis climbed in through the broken door, and then opened it for Zoey. The two survivors walked in a few steps, and then stopped, in darkness. There was a light attached beneath the barrel of the pistol. Louis flicked it on. A bright cone of light illuminated the floor in front of him. The survivors proceeded.

Louis had visited the library many times in the years that he had lived in the city, and he knew the layout. The computers were at the far end of the library, against the opposite wall. The library was small, and the middle aisle was barely wide enough to permit two people to walk side by side. Louis walked a few steps in front of Zoey, scanning each aisle with his light.

Eventually they made it to the computers. Louis turned one on, glancing over his shoulder impatiently as it loaded. He saw somebody standing at the front door of the library, peering in. The stranger, who evidently couldn't see Louis or Zoey, carried on down the road.

"Take this," Louis said to Zoey, handing her the pistol, "and watch the door."

Zoey took the gun, and Louis sat down at the computer, logging into a guest file. Typing furiously to bring up webpages and search engines, Louis felt a pang of sorrow as he realized that this may be the last time he ever used a computer. _No_, he thought, _This isn't the end. We're gonna get out of this city, and then life will return to normal_.

There was zombie news everywhere – the media was referring to them as zombies now, no more beating around the bush. Infections had come up in many major cities, although they were all still in the Influenza stage of the virus – the media was calling it Green Phase I, and drastic measures were being taken to make sure that these other outbreaks were being contained. Apparently the entire state of Pennsylvania was in martial law.

Green Phase II – the psycho rabid phase – had appeared in a couple cities, but only in Louis' area was the infection out of control. Many evacuation sites had been closed down, Louis read, including the subways, while the military had stationed new evacuation sites at the airport and military base.

"Louis?" Zoey whispered. Louis glanced over his shoulder at her. "Yeah?"

The glass door shattered, and Louis turned around to see an infected man sprinting across the library, straight at Zoey. She fired the pistol, and Louis saw the man's shoulder twitch from the bullet; the man didn't slow, however. He had halved the distance between them now.

With a cry, Zoey fired four more shots. Small, red geysers shot up from the bullets' impact sites on the man's chest and body, and he stumbled to his knees, collapsing motionless to the ground a couple feet away from Zoey. She turned to look at Louis, her eyes wide, her breaths ragged, and he wondered if she was going to faint or throw up.

There were growls and hisses from outside, and both survivors turned back to the doorway in time to see at least five more infected crash through the doors. Zoey started firing the pistol again. Louis looked around the room. There was an emergency exit nearby, which led out to an alley. "Through here!" He said, pointing to the exit. Both survivors hurried to the door. The remaining infected were almost upon them. Louis shoved the door open, and they rushed into the alley. The door barely had time to swing shut before an infected woman barrelled through it. Zoey brought the pistol up and fired, and the woman stopped in her tracks with blood gushing from her throat.

Louis grabbed Zoey's hand, and pulled her down the alley. Two more infected burst through the emergency exit, shoving aside the dying woman, and chased after them. Grabbing the pistol from Zoey, Louis fired three more shots, expending the clip and taking down one of their two pursuers. He reached into his jacket pocket with shaking hands, extracting a magazine, but the zombie had already broken the distance between them. Reacting with sheer knee-jerk instinct, Louis swung the empty pistol. There was a crack as the handle struck the man's cheek, and he stumbled into the nearby wall. Holding the weapon by the barrel, Louis brought the handle of the gun down on the back of the man's neck, and he collapsed to the ground. He started clambering to his feet immediately; ignoring whatever pain he had to have been in. Taking the pistol clip that was in his other hand; Louis reloaded the weapon and fired a final shot into the zombie's head.

Louis looked down the alley, at the other infected he had put down. At the beginning of the day, they had all been normal people. It was only by luck that Louis hadn't ended up as one of them.

"Don't try to humanize them," Zoey told him. "It's a common mistake in the movies. They aren't human anymore. It's them or us, now."

Louis nodded. She was right.

"The website said they're evacuating people out of the airports and military bases, now. The nearest base if Fort Jackdaw, near the freeway."

"Do you know the way?"

"Yeah, it's no more than an hour from here! Come on, before more of them show up." Louis turned and hurried out to the street, with Zoey following behind.

"Holy shit," Zoey muttered as they stepped out onto the street. This was a larger street than the one they had previously been on, and it looked like there had been a four car pileup just a few yards from where they stood. One of the vehicles was on fire, and bodies were scattered around them. A police car sat a small distance away from the wreckage. Its lights were flashing. An officer stood nearby, her head whipping around, looking for any threats.

"A cop!" Louis exclaimed, "Hey! Hey!"

The officer turned to look at them, raising the shotgun she held in alarm. She lowered it, however, after realizing that they were normal.

"Are you infected?" The woman called, "Were you bit?"

"No, we're fine." Louis called back, jogging over to her. She tensed as they neared, but didn't raise her weapon again.

"Do you have a weapon?" The officer asked. Louis brandished his pistol. "I've got this."

"Good. How about you?" She asked Zoey. The girl shook her head. The cop scanned the nearest corpses and, bending down, picked an Uzi up off a nearby cadaver. "You should take this, then." She said. Zoey tested the weight of the weapon. "Thanks," she said tentatively.

"It's hell out here," The officer said to Louis. "Hundreds are dead, hundreds are infected, and hundreds of people are just running around, looting and causing havoc. The death tolls are going up. Falkner Bridge was overrun twenty minutes ago."

"Really?"

"The infected attacked in a massive mob from one end, and the military shot anybody who tried to break through the other. The civilians were trapped on the bridge. That was when the radio updates stopped. They aren't going to let us out of here now, we may as well be infected."

As if on cue, a screaming infected man burst out of a nearby shop. The officer swung around, and fired the shotgun. The man was knocked off of his feet, and landed on his back on the ground. He started to clamber up again, despite the gaping hole in his stomach. She finished him off with a shot to the head. "Where are you guys going?"

"We heard they're still evacuating from the Jackdaw military base."

The officer snorted. "This is a Class A military fuckup. They're trying to clean up their mess by making sure no potential carriers of this virus get out alive. It takes them five minutes to screen each person; that's how Falkner got so backed up. If you show any symptoms at all, they shoot you. Maybe you'll be lucky, and they'll let you through. As for me, I'm not going to chance it. A few of the cops have holed up in Precinct 8, on Granville Street. I was assigned this post with my partner, to try to maintain some semblance of order on these streets. He went down the road twenty minutes ago, and I lost radio contact." She shook her head. "Two hours ago, we were just hunting for crazies from Mercy Hospital. How did things go so wrong so _fast_?"

There were more crashes in the distance, and a loud screeching sound, as if a large vehicle had just been overturned and was sliding along the road. From nearby, Louis heard motorcycles, shouts, and gunshots.

"Shit, what is that?" The cop muttered, spinning and looking down the street in the direction of the sounds.

"More survivors, from the sound of it. That's a good thing, right?" Zoey asked, her voice shaking a little.

"Not always," The cop crept around the car, putting it between herself and the sound of the bikers, who were definitely approaching them. Louis and Zoey followed.

They knelt down behind the hood of the car as five bikes turned the corner down the road. They were suddenly blinded by the bright headlights of motorcycles. Deafening gunshots cracked in the air, shattering windshields and perforating cars along the street. One of the bikers cheered as he sped past the squad car, firing a burst of an Uzi into the air. A second biker swung a baseball bat as he passed, smashing one of the car's flashing emergency lights.

Only one of the bikers, a stoic, muscular man with a goatee and a leather vest with a shotgun slung across his back, seemed to notice the survivors. His eyes widened in mild surprise as he saw them, and then he, too, had passed.

Louis, Zoey and the cop hurried to the middle of the road, watching the bikers as they drove off into the distance.

"That's it!" The cop exclaimed suddenly, heading toward the police car. "Fuck this place, these bastards can fend for themselves!" She got in behind the wheel of the car, and rolled down the window. "Good luck to you two, and be careful out there!"

"You, too," Zoey replied with a nod. The officer rolled up the window, and then pulled out onto the road, driving off toward the middle of the city, following the bikers.

Zoey and Louis stood in the middle of the road, alone again. The only sounds were the distant gunshots, the occasional screams, and the crackling of the burning car behind them.

Zoey turned to Louis, holding up the Uzi. "Have you ever fired one of these before?"

Louis took the weapon with a nod, giving Zoey the pistol and the extra rounds of ammunition. Zoey popped the pistol clip in and out experimentally, and then chambered a bullet. "Let's get going," She said.

The duo jogged down the road until they came to an alley, and turned into it. The alley was narrow, and they had to move single file to travel through it. They emerged on a small street, which appeared to be almost untouched by the chaos of the city. It was an older street, lined with narrow, brick buildings with old-fashioned stone stairs leading up to them. Cars were still parked on either side of the road, undisturbed. Most of the doors to the buildings were closed, and the windows were all intact. The illusion of peace was ruined by the corpse of a man with his head crushed in, lying on a front stoop. Louis and Zoey walked down this street, heading toward the middle of the city.

"Brace yourself," Louis said, partially to Zoey and partially to himself. "Things are only going to get worse from here."

As if to prove his point, a loud explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet, and Louis could see the sky light up in the distance – he guessed that a gas station had just exploded. This was followed by more screams.

"Louis!" Zoey hissed, grabbing his sleeve suddenly and pointing. A man stumbled from the alley up ahead, out into the middle of the street. Louis brought the Uzi up to bear on the man – he was a good fifty yards away, but Louis was a practiced shot from years at the firing range. "Hey!" He called to the man.

The stranger looked up, his face seeming to glow in the reflection from the street light above him. Even from this distance, Louis could see one of his eyes hanging from its socket. Zoey gasped. The man started sprinting toward them.

Louis fired a burst, striking the man on his right side. He spun, stumbling drunkenly from side to side, before falling onto the front hood of a minivan. Its alarm went off with deafening blare and a flash of lights.

"Shit," Louis muttered, covering his ears. "As if things weren't chaotic enough."

While Louis covered his ears, Zoey heard a sound coming from one of the buildings. She turned, to see the front door of the nearest building rattling, as if someone was thumping it from the inside. In a couple of the upper floors, she saw dark shadows hurrying left and right. She opened her mouth to tell Louis, when from behind them a window shattered. She spun around in time to see a middle-aged woman falling from the fourth floor of a building, surrounded by cascading glass fragments. She was growling, and even in the short time Zoey watched her she could tell that the woman was infected. Her screams were instantly cut off when she hit the pavement with a thud.

The alarm finally stopped blaring, and now Louis could also hear the thumping sounds – not just on one of the doors, but on many of them. There were also growls and snarls emanating audibly from the buildings.

"L-let's get going," Louis stuttered, giving Zoey's sweater a tug as he started down the road. One of the doors suddenly crashed open, and an entire family of infected burst out. A zombie child in pyjamas, no older than twelve, climbed over a station wagon as he dashed toward the duo. Zoey had never seen a zombie child, not even in movies, and she hesitated to shoot.

Louis fired a burst, taking out a middle-aged man. The other two women, aged perhaps forty and eighteen at the most, didn't even notice as their patriarch was gunned down. This indifference served to remind Zoey of what they were, zombies, and she pulled the trigger on the boy a split second before he would have lunged at her ankle. He crumpled to the pavement, and she immediately turned her gun on one of the others. _Don't think, they aren't people anymore, don't think_.

More doors were being broken open, and a couple of first and second story windows shattered. Zombies spilled out; most of the ones who had jumped from the windows landed relatively unharmed, and they all hurried towards the duo from many directions.

"Run!" Louis cried, shoving Zoey down the road. She hurried down the street, and a few of the nearest zombies altered their course to follow her. Louis fired at one that had gotten dangerously close to her, and then turned in time to bash a second one in the face with his gun before it could bite him. Infected seemed to be everywhere, and most of them were converging on Louis. Following his own advice, he ran after Zoey.

She had gotten a solid lead on him; he wasn't sure how fast she could run, and wanted to give her a head start on the zombies that had been trained on him. There were still three zombies right behind her, but they didn't seem to be gaining any ground on her.

Louis glanced over his own shoulder; there were at least fifteen zombies on him, possibly more. He looked forward again, his feet pounding the pavement, running as fast as he could.

Zoey glanced over her own shoulder, and at that moment a zombie who had gained a little ground on her swiped with his arm. She screamed, and then stumbled, landing flat on her face on the asphalt. With surprising quickness, she rolled onto her back and fired five shots into the nearest zombie, who had been about to dive on her. Instead, he merely fell off to the side. She dispatched the other two with shots to the head and throat. "Get up, Zoey! Get up!" Louis shouted. She was only five steps away, and judging from the snarls and hisses at his back, the zombies were hot on his tail.

Zoey's eyes widened in horror at the approaching horde, and Louis was afraid she would freeze up. She kept her head, however, and immediately rose to her feet, firing a shot with her pistol as she did so. The bullet flew close by Louis' head – frighteningly close, as a matter of fact- but he heard a juicy splatter as it hit one of his pursuers, and one of the loudest snarls was instantly cut off.

Louis grabbed Zoey and pulled her as he ran. There was an intersection not far ahead. The intersecting street was four lanes, the light was red, and it was the middle of the night. Nevertheless, the duo didn't even hesitate to hurry headlong through the intersection.

There was an elementary school nearby, on the other side of a wide parking lot. "In there!" Louis panted, wiping sweat from his eyes. Zoey nodded. They cut across the street, clambering up a shallow patch of grass to reach the parking lot. The snarls were still close behind them; it was as if the zombies' stamina was inexhaustible.

The parking lot was deserted. The school's entrance was up two flights of stone steps. Louis and Zoey took the steps two at a time, reloading as she did so. Louis stumbled halfway up, and for a second he thought he was a goner, but then he caught hold of the rail and regained his balance.

Zoey reached the top of the stairs first. At the top, she whirled around and started shooting. The closest zombie, who had only been two steps behind her, fell back with a bullet in his forehead. He tumbled into the two other closest ones, slowing them down long enough for Zoey to cover Louis, taking out a zombie that was mere instants from biting into the back of his neck. Her shots were spaced out, not panicked, and she was lining them up almost perfectly. Even with death a mere two steps behind him, Louis couldn't help but marvel at the young woman's composure.

A metal rail in the middle of the stairs had separated Louis and Zoey, and the horde following them had split up to pursue both of them. Louis, reaching the top of the stairs, spun around and bashed the nearest zombie in the face with his gun. It stumbled back, too stupid to grab the rail for support, and then rolled down the stairs. He immediately unloaded his Uzi on the other pursuers. They convulsed as bullets peppered their bodies, sending out little spurts of blood, and fell down the stairs. Some still twitched as they lay on the ground, but most were still.

Zoey fired more shots, taking out a couple more zombies, and then her pistol clicked impotently. She ejected the spent clip, fishing a new one from her pocket, backing up toward the door as she did so. The remaining infected sprinted up the stairs at her. Louis fired at them, but only a couple bullets came out before his weapon also clicked. Nonetheless, an infected woman stumbled to the ground with a chunk of her brain missing. One down, three left.

Zoey had backed all the way up to the front door of the school, as she desperately tried to fit the magazine into the weapon with shaking hands. "Hold on!" Louis called, quickly fishing a fresh Uzi clip from his own belt and loading it with practiced ease. The zombies were between Zoey and him, however. He couldn't fire for fear of hitting her.

Zoey brought the pistol up as the nearest zombie, a big black man, slammed into her. She went flying backward, through the glass door of the school, and landed on her back in the school lobby. The zombie rolled off of her, and she struggled to her knees. The second zombie suddenly smashed into her, and she was on the ground again. She felt him come down on top of her, and then the other two joined him.

_I'm going to die_, she thought, _this is what it's like to be swarmed, and I'm going to be one of them._

A long Uzi burst echoed in the lobby. There were metallic pings as the bullets bounced off the bright orange lockers. Zoey felt some of the weight relieved from her as one of the infected stumbled off of her. Another one fell on her, and lay as dead weight. The third stumbled back, hitting a locker door with a loud clang, and then slid to the ground.

Louis pulled the dead weight off of Zoey, helping her to her feet. Her quivering legs buckled, and she almost collapsed again, but Louis grabbed her arms, and steadied her. He guided her to a chair near the front door, and helped her into it.

"Oh my God," Zoey gasped, panting for breath. Louis sat down on the ground beside her, his back against a locker. "I can't believe we're alive." He said. His face was a mask of sheer incredulity and disbelief. Suddenly, Zoey started to laugh. Louis turned to her, worried. "What is it?" He demanded. Zoey couldn't reply, however. She was in hysterics.

Louis started laughing as well, throwing his head back against the locker and howling laughter. He had a cramp in his stomach from the running, his breaths were coming in ragged gasps, and yet he laughed harder than he ever had in his life. And he knew that if he stopped laughing soon, he would certainly throw up. This knowledge just made him laugh harder.

"We did it!" Zoey cried between howls. "We survived!"

"It hasn't even started yet!" Louis replied, drawing a ragged breath between each word. "This was nothing!"

"We're so fucked!" Zoey replied, doubled over from the laughter.

"Fifteen thousand people in this city!" Louis cried, "Fifteen fucking thousand!" This just made them both laugh even harder.

They laughed for another ten minutes, and then Zoey broke into violent, throaty coughs. She fell from the chair, her body wracking from the coughing; she still giggled between each cough.

They came out of their fit of hysteria slowly, and then sat down at the base of the lockers, staring at the front door and the corpses surrounding it. Outside, there were no more battle sounds – at least for the moment. It seemed that the only sounds in the whole city were the duo's ragged, panting breaths.

"Louis," Zoey muttered after a minute, "I'm so tired. I don't think I can make it to Jackdaw tonight."

" 'Fort Jackdaw's an hour away,' " he muttered, repeating what he had said back in the library. "I'm an idiot. Jackdaw's a dozen blocks away. We're in Columbus Elementary right now, for perspective. That's a block and a half from the library." Louis sighed. "Fort Jackdaw may as well be in Texas."

Zoey's smile was completely gone now. "Let's just find a place to sleep. We'll worry about it in the morning."

The duo walked to the school infirmary, where they found both a couch and a bed. The infirmary was on the ground floor, but the windows had been barricaded against vandals by metal blinds, which blocked the city out entirely. Louis closed the thick, metal door behind them as they entered the infirmary, and made sure it was locked. Then he guided Zoey to the bed. She didn't even take her jacket off; she simply collapsed on top of the cot, and was asleep. Louis sat down on the couch, removing his black business jacket and loosening the red tie he wore. There was blood on his jacket, he noted with dismay. It had been his favourite. He hung it on a nearby chair. _Coat-draped-on-chair, _he thought sadly to himself. _Is there a more domestic sight? Does anything else give off such an air of welcome, of familiarity?_

Zoey was snoring in the other room. Louis sat back on the couch, not ready to lie down yet, and checked his watch. It was 10:30 PM. Two and a half hours ago, Louis had brought over some soup for Zoey's ailing roommate.

For the first time since seeing Rachel sick in her room, Louis actually had time to reflect on the situation. He had shot people – he didn't even know how many anymore. Twenty? Thirty? _Don't think._ An easy thing to do in the thick of things, but now... Shit, he watched Zoey blow away a child!

The girl muttered something in her sleep, and he turned to look at her. He remembered how ably she had covered his back in the library. Then, just a half hour later, on the school steps, she had saved his life. He had misjudged her when they left Mr. Gutierrez at the lobby of the apartment. Back then, he thought Zoey would be a bit of a burden. Now he realized there was nobody he would rather have at his side. She had proven herself to be bold, quick-thinking, and athletic.

Louis lay down, resting his head on the cushioned arm of the chair and shutting his eyes. In an instant, all the chaos melted away and he was asleep.


	4. Day 8 pt 1 - The Elementary School

**I apologize for the delay, I thought I'd crank a full story out over my vacation, but apparently I can only write when I have no time to do so, for I never found the motivation until now. For now I'm sitting on the next 3 chapters, which I've got written but not properly proofed.**

**I want to thank you for the positive reviews, but I must reiterate this point for the naysayers: the conception of this project PREDATES The Sacrifice, as the first 2 chapters of this story were written in '08-'09. Enjoy!  
**

Louis awoke to the crisp smell of coffee, and for a minute he was tempted to believe that he was back home, in Florida, with his mother and two brothers. "Mom?" He muttered, pulling himself to a seated position, and then he felt the jab of the Uzi in his belt poking his stomach, and everything came back to him. His eyes opened, and he looked around. He was in the school infirmary still, but that wasn't where the coffee smell came from. No, the door on the opposite wall was open, and the smell was coming from the staff room in the adjacent chamber. There was also soft music in the staff room, and Louis saw a flash of pink as Zoey walked past the door. Louis got to his feet, putting his blood-stained jacket back on.

He walked up to the door, resting his hands on the doorframe and looking into the staff room. Like the infirmary, it was secured by metal blinds across all the windows, and the only other door was a big metal one leading out to the hallway. There was a long table across the middle of the room, and a fridge, kitchen sink and counter on the opposite wall. It was on this counter that the coffee machine rested, along with many coffee mugs. Zoey had a mug in her hands, and as Louis watched she plopped herself down on the table and took a sip. He could now understand the words to the music playing lightly from the nearby radio – it was "I've Got You, Babe".

"Good morning," Louis said, mustering all the cheer he could into the greeting. Zoey looked over her shoulder at him, slightly startled. "Oh, morning." She said, returning the smile.

Louis crossed the room to the coffeepot, and poured himself a cup. Leaning against the counter, he took a sip. "Mm," he said approvingly, "That's good coffee!"

"You can cut the flattery," Zoey admonished, "It's just powdered stuff I found on top of the fridge."

"You could have fooled me. Enjoying some soft rock?" Louis motioned to the radio. Zoey blushed. "I got tired of hearing all that good news they have to give us. We can change it if you want."

"Did they say anything worthwhile?"

"Other than that the infection can be spread by bites now, and the army is pulling out of the evacuation zones? No, nothing."

Louis sighed. "They pulled out already, huh?" The hopelessness of the previous night finally dropped on him again. "Are you saying we're stranded here?"

"They bombed the bridges, too. There are still a few Samaritans going around in News choppers and fishing boats, apparently, trying to pick up survivors on rooftops and in harbours, but the military has shifted their priorities elsewhere – namely into keeping us contained in this city. 'Stay indoors with your shades drawn and keep the noise down'. That's their survival tips."

Louis' stomach growled loudly, and he opened the fridge. It was empty. "I don't suppose there's anything to eat around here?"

"Nope." Zoey gave a thin smile. "I thought I remembered passing a service station while we were running for our lives back there. There'll certainly be something to eat there."

Louis downed the rest of the coffee, and suddenly felt pressure in his abdomen. Checking his watch (it was nearly noon), Louis realized that it had nearly been twenty-four hours since he had last used the washroom. "I think we should both make a quick pit stop before we head out," He said to Zoey. "Who knows when we'll get the opportunity again?"

Zoey, who had been thinking along the same lines, nodded gratefully at not being the one to say it. Louis went to the hall door and pushed it open, peering cautiously out in both directions. He led Zoey down the hall to the washrooms. They passed the front lobby, and the bloody carnage of their struggle, and both of them shuddered.

They decided they would take turns – one would use the restroom, while the other would stand outside and watch. Louis took first watch. The task was uneventful, and nobody came around in the time that he waited. He could hear gunshots outside, and the occasional siren, but nowhere near the chaos of the previous night.

Zoey emerged from the women's washroom, and Louis stepped into the men's, immediately going to the mirror. He could see lines under his eyes. His white shirt was smudged in some places, and when he pulled back his jacket he could see sweat stains under the arms. The front was untucked. If he walked into work looking like this, he mused, he would likely be fired on sight. He tightened his tie up, out of habit.

After this personal inspection, and a brief mental lament that he didn't have a toothbrush on hand, Louis glanced at the urinal, and then to the stall, agonizing over his first decision of the day. Taking into consideration what he had said to Zoey, about not knowing when their next opportunity would be, Louis opted for the stall.

* * *

Zoey leaned against the wall outside, pistol in her right hand, cell phone in her left. She had kept her phone off the previous night, and had missed about thirty frantic calls from her mother. She had wanted to phone her mother back before Louis woke up, but her cell phone was apparently being restricted to emergency calls – undoubtedly an action taken by CEDA to free up the cellular signals. She decided that she would tell Louis, and they would try to find a phone before they went out. He probably had people to call, as well. Zoey suddenly heard the crackle of glass being broken. The sounds were coming from the lobby, where the floor was littered with broken glass from the front doors.

She listened as the person at the front door stopped, and then there were more cracks – definitely more than one set of footsteps.

"H-hello?" Zoey called out tentatively. In the men's room, she faintly heard a flushing toilet. Apparently her visitors also heard the sound, because she suddenly heard grunts, and then the slapping of running feet. Two men rounded the corner. They opened their mouths at the sight of Zoey. One of them had bloodstains on his teeth.

The pistol fired once, and the blood-stained teeth disappeared, along with the man's entire lower jaw. He fell flat on his face, rolling onto his back, motionless. Zoey had no time to watch this, however, as she turned the gun on the second man. Her second shot was fired in haste, and struck his shoulder. He didn't slow, and Zoey immediately readjusted her aim. The next shot, fired from a mere three yards away, went through the man's right eye. He tumbled on his back, motionless.

Louis rushed out of the bathroom, Uzi raised, belt unbuckled. Zoey turned to him, and their eyes met for a tense moment, and then she smiled. "You're too late," Zoey told him, "Crisis averted."

Louis, face flushed at literally being ambushed with his pants down, quickly did up his belt. Then he noticed the phone in Zoey's hand. "Get any calls?"

"A few missed ones, last night." She replied. "I was thinking we should find a phone here before we head out."

"Good plan. Who knows how long the power will stay on? This may be our only chance. I think we passed an administrator's office on the way in. If any place will have a working phone, that'll be it."

They stepped gingerly over the two corpses that Zoey felled, backtracking toward the front entrance. The girl turned to her partner, and noticed that Louis had tightened his tie while in the bathroom. She smiled at this. "You're definitely making me feel like I underdressed to this apocalypse."

He chuckled. "Force of habit, I guess." He grabbed his tie, preparing to loosen it again.

"No," Zoey replied, "keep it. I think we both need a bit of normalcy right now."

The door to the office was shut and locked. It took a couple of kicks, but Louis got it open. He turned on the office lights, and then both survivors crossed to the phone. Louis picked it up and held it to his ear. There was a dial tone. He handed it to Zoey. "You first. 9 for an outgoing line."

She grabbed the phone from him, hit 9, and then dialled her parents' number. The phone rang once, twice, three times, and Zoey's heart sank as the automated voicemail cut in. She hung up, and then dialled another number. Again, no answer. She cried out in frustration and slammed the phone down, fighting back tears.

"Maybe they're at work," Louis said lamely. He could barely comprehend the idea of _work_ right now... The idea that, elsewhere in America, there was a man just like him crunching numbers into a computer, counting down the minutes till break.

"Maybe." Zoey whispered, handing Louis the phone. He took it, and quickly dialled his mother's number, down in Florida.

There was an answer on the first ring. "Hello?" It was Darrel "Juice" Randall, Louis' oldest brother. He sighed in relief. "Juice! My God am I glad to hear your voice!" He cried, inwardly feeling guilty that _his_ loved ones had answered.

"Ho-lee shiit. Lou. Nancy! Nancy, call Mom! I've got Lou on the phone!" This last part Darrell shouted to his wife.

"Listen, Juice, I don't have a lot of time." Louis said, cutting off his excited brother. "If you let Mom get on the phone, she'll talk my ear off. I just want to touch base, see how you guys are holding up."

"It's not so bad out here, Lou. A few people sick. Streets are empty, people missing work... glad I work at home, that's for sure! But Fairfield... Holy shit, Lou, I saw the reports!"

"Yeah, man, it's bad. I've got a friend with me, and we're holding our own pretty well so far, but it's a war zone out here. The evac points have all been shut down, according to the news. There are some good people around the city who are ferrying survivors out, and our best bet is to find one of them."

There was silence on the other end for a couple seconds, and when Darrel next spoke up, his voice was heavy with emotion. "Listen, Lou, I just want to apologize for-"

Louis barked out a forced laugh, cutting his brother off. "Don't you start up with this sentimental bullshit. I'm getting out of here, Juice. I don't know when, or how, but tell Mom to have dinner on the table when I get there."

"You'd better make it on one piece, Lou-zer." Darrel replied. "I'd hate to have to kick the ass of a cripple."

"Take care of yourself, Juice. Tell Mom I'll see her soon. And be careful." Louis hung up the phone, swallowed the emotions that threatened to overtake him, and then turned to Zoey. "Let's get out of here," he said.

* * *

The duo emerged from the elementary school into a bright afternoon, squinting against the sunlight. It was a quiet, moderately warm morning. The sunlight beat on their faces, and they could hear the chirping of birds. At the moment, there were no sounds of combat anywhere in the city; while this may have been a bad sign in the grand scheme of things, at the moment it only served to fill Louis with a sense of peace and order. The placidity of this morning made the Armageddon of last night seem like a mere nightmare.

Unfortunately, they only needed to look across the street to be pulled back into reality. Corpses littered the marble steps leading up to the front door. In fact, there were corpses lined up all the way down the road from Zoey and Louis' misadventure with the car alarm.

"Like macabre bread crumbs." Zoey muttered, her eyes following the bodies all the way down the street. "_Hansel and Gretel_ from Hell."

The gas station was directly across the street from the elementary school parking lot. A large SHELL sign still revolved lazily above the building, which never got the chance to close down for the night. There were two cars at the pumps – one was abandoned, all four of its doors wide open. The other one was closed up, its windows tinted opaque by massive, gory blood spatters.

There were about four zombies standing amongst the pumps lazily. One of them was staring up into the sun, which reflected off its greying face.

"Maybe we should just go around," Zoey said to Louis. "You know, find another place."

Louis nodded silently, and the pair prepared to turn around and walk in the opposite direction when they heard the loud hum of a car engine and the screech of brakes. A Jeep suddenly appeared from around the corner, turning sharply down the road that the school was on. It sped past Louis and Zoey, smashing into one of the two zombies on the road. The zombie bounced off the windshield, cracking it, and the Jeep swerved, smashing into the side of a parked car. This caught the attention of the four zombies gathered among the pumps, and they immediately chased after the Jeep, which now appeared to be out of control. The Jeep swerved to the other side of the road, striking another parked car and then bouncing over a corpse. It struck a second zombie, flinging her right over the roof, before seeming to regain control, and accelerate down the road. Now all of the zombies on the street – a good twelve of them – were following the driver in the Jeep. Louis turned to Zoey, and they exchanged looks of stunned disbelief.

The survivors hurried across the road to the gas station. The shop was deserted and appeared to have been ransacked. Snacks littered the ground, and one of the Slushie machines was leaking something red, creating a pool of sticky, sweet syrup that resembled blood in every respect but its smell. Nevertheless, Louis and Zoey immediately fell upon the power bars and water bottles. Although it was far from an ideal meal, it would have to tide them over until they found a more permanent lodging in an apartment building. Louis found a First Aid kit hanging on a discount shelf, and strapped in to his back. He wasn't sure how effective disinfectant would be against a zombie bite, but it never hurt to try. He stuffed the kit full of power bars as well, to tide them over for later.

"Where to now?" Zoey asked ten minutes later, as they emerged from the gas station. Louis shrugged. "Where can we go?"

"I'd just like to find a safe place to stay for now," Zoey replied. "Somewhere we can shower, and prepare a good meal, and feel safe again. . ."

Louis nodded; the thought seemed very enticing to him, as well. "We'll head to the Morpheus. It's Fairfield's biggest hotel. Twenty floors, I think. The penthouse suite should be safe, and I think it even has a helipad!"

"How far is it?" Zoey asked. Louis grimaced. "Ten minutes' cab ride." He replied. "Walking distance, perhaps a half hour. Once you take the Infected into consideration, however..." He sighed. "Hopefully we can reach the hotel before nightfall."

"I'm not sure," Zoey muttered, squinting at the tall building against the sunlight. "Seems like a dangerous walk."

"It will be dangerous," Louis agreed, "definitely, but it's just as good as hanging out here and waiting for them to come to us. It's your call, though."

Zoey furrowed her brow in thought, gazing at her feet, and then nodded. "Alright, let's do it."

The two survivors started walking down the road, which had been graciously cleared by the Jeep. Zoey stepped gingerly over one of the broken zombies that the Jeep had struck. The zombie, a heavyset woman in her thirties, snarled weakly at them as they passed her. Zoey aimed her pistol at the woman's head, and then lowered it. The Jeep had lured all the zombies away; she didn't want to risk drawing them back. They left the dying zombie behind.

The carnage on the street was horrible. There were cars smashed everywhere, and bodies littered the streets and sidewalks. Blood was also everywhere, as was the stench of gore and death.

"One night," Louis muttered, casting his eyes over the sight. "All of this happened in one night." Once again, he was acutely aware of the silence of the city – in the distance he could hear motorbikes, but that was it. No more gunshots, or explosions. The war for the city was lost.

They walked for ten minutes when Louis saw a shocking sight. The Jeep stood abandoned on the side of the road, in the place where it had crashed into a lamp post. Its driver's side door was open. Louis and Zoey saw gunshot-riddled bodies surrounding the Jeep. One man sat against the side of the Jeep, sobbing. His shirt, a button-up plaid, had been opened to bare his right shoulder. There was a horrible bite mark in it.

"Shit," Louis muttered. The man raised his pistol instinctively and then, seeing Louis and Zoey, he lowered it. "One bite is all it takes," The man told them. He was a young man, with long black hair. "That's what the television says. Just one bite."

Louis looked up and down the road, but it was clear.

"Don't worry, I took them all with me. I wasn't fast enough, that's all. One of them got me while I was tangled in my seat belt. I'm not going to become one of them, though." Green eyes darted to Louis, then to Zoey, twin spheres of hopeless dejection.

"It's okay, man." Louis took a step toward the man, pulling the First Aid kit off his shoulder. "I got some bandages and disinfectant. We can try to-"

"Don't come any closer!" The stranger shouted, his voice breaking. "Don't you see? I'm one of _them_ now!" He pointed his gun at the nearest zombie, an overweight man in a pair of dirty white briefs. "I'm not going to become one of them, though. Not me, not Kirk Hemphill. Oh, no. . ." Before either of the survivors could react, the man put his pistol in his mouth.

"No!" They cried in unison, but the man pulled the trigger, splattering his brains all over the back door of his Jeep. He slumped sideways, coming to rest on the street among the other corpses.

"Shit," Louis muttered. "Shit, shit shit. I might've helped him." He looked down at the kit in his hands.

"Not from a bite," Zoey replied, shaken from the event. "Bites are final."

"In the fucking movies!" Louis exclaimed. "But the movies don't know everything." He kicked a fallen corpse lightly – the corpse had three bullets in its body. "You don't need to shoot these things in the head. The movies were wrong about that! Never give up, Zoey! We can't ever give up!"

Zoey knelt down in front of the dead stranger. "You were a brave man, Kirk Hemphill." She said to him. Then, gingerly, she peeled his gun out of his still-warm hand, and took the clips out of his belt. "How are you doing for ammo, Louis?"

"I'm almost out," he replied. Zoey engaged the safety on Kirk's pistol, and then tossed it to Louis. He caught it. "They might have heard that gunshot."

"Either way," Zoey replied, "I don't want to wait around here longer than I need to."

Louis stepped away from the car. Zoey hesitated a second, paying a final respect to the man who had lost his life drawing the infected from the gas station, and then she followed.

They spent the rest of the day moving west, toward the river and the docks. They found a couple "safehouses" along the way – doors marked with symbols of houses on them, presumably by other survivors who had holed up there. Over the course of the next couple hours, these houses provided them with information, in the form of graffiti. Some of it was helpful, while some of it... was less so.

_**They're attracted to pitch**_, one of the more helpful messages read. _**Gunshots seem to be okay, but don't make any high-pitched noises!**_

After that message, the two survivors became a lot more liberal with their firearms. The information seemed to be accurate; the zombies didn't seem to notice the pair as long as they picked them off at a distance.

_** Watch out for Carriers**_, read another message. _**Carriers look and act like normal people, and they don't turn, but they are contagious.**_ And, written beneath that message: _**If you get bit and you think you're going to turn, kill yourself. If you get bit and you don't turn right away, it means you're a Carrier. Kill yourself anyway.**_

"Carriers," Zoey muttered as she read this message. "Hey, Lou, do you think-"

"We might be. Never give up." Louis interjected, remembering the ill-fated Kirk. "There may be hope for us yet."


	5. Day 8 pt 2 - The Morpheus

**I'm officially completely into new stuff, no more editing old material from here on out. Will probably change the rating pretty soon, so be sure to account for that if you're checking up on this story regularly, cause it'll disappear from the regular ET Rating list view. Any constructive praise or criticism is welcome. Your insights into the character psyches are also very welcome. I'm doing my best to keep them true to the material, but at best it's just my interpretation of my material.**

It was about five in the afternoon when they left their final safehouse before the hotel. The high rise loomed over their heads, just a few blocks away. All they had to do was pass through a Chinese restaurant down the road, and they'd officially be out of the downtown outskirts of the city. The street seemed clear, although there were at least two dozen motionless corpses.

"Ready?" Louis asked. Zoey nodded, and Louis opened the door to the safehouse. They stepped out onto the open street.

"Lotta bodies," Louis noted. "Looks like someone's been through here."

"Shit!" Zoey hissed, grabbing the man's shoulder and quickly pulling him into an alley.

"What is it?" He asked.

She pointed out into the street. It was bright out, and the laser sight that was scanning the road was barely visible.

"Survivors!" Louis breathed.

"Armed and dangerous," Zoey replied. "I've played enough video games to recognize a sniper laser when I see it. We need to be careful."

"I'm just happy to see another living person!"

The pair crept out into the street, keeping low and near the wall. Zoey pointed out the window that the laser was coming from; indeed it was a rifle, on the second floor of the building. It was on their side of the road, which meant that if they kept quiet and remained near the wall, they would be able to pass unnoticed.

They moved along the sidewalk; storefronts lined the street, and some had broken display windows. The pair moved extremely slowly over the broken glass, hoping their crunches wouldn't be audible. Louis stopped when they reached the sniper's building, loathe to step in front of the large window. _There might be others in there,_ he thought, remembering the bike gang that had harassed the police officer last night. _The Wild West has come to Fairfield_. He pondered peering into the window, to try to see if there were more people on the bottom floor. He never got the chance, however.

"Shit!" Zoey cried, a bit too loudly. She grabbed Louis' shoulder, and started pulling him in the direction they had come.

"Who's there?" A man called from inside the building, but Louis and Zoey never got a chance to answer. At that moment a horde of zombies poured forth from around the corner up ahead, sprinting down the road toward them all.

"Run! Run!" Louis shouted, and both survivors started sprinting back down the road. Gunfire erupted from the windows of the store behind them – not just one shooter, but multiple. Louis spared a glance over his shoulder, and saw that the horde was paying the two of them no mind. The zombies attacked the building with a ferocious single-mindedness; the bulk of them crashed through the display window, while more of them rushed into the alleys and side doors. Some managed to climb up onto a Dumpster, and then pull themselves into second story windows with an agility that belied their posthumous condition. The cohesion of their attack was horrifying.

Only a few stragglers broke off the main group to chase Louis and Zoey. With a competence that still managed to surprise Louis, Zoey dispatched each of the pursuers with conservative shots to the head, breathing slowly and spacing out the shots to ensure her accuracy.

"We've got to hide," Louis shouted, over the screams and gunfire that were ringing only half a block away.

"In there!" Zoey pointed to a Dumpster in a nearby, dead-end alley.

"Really?" Louis lamented, but at that moment gut-wrenching screams echoed from the swarmed building, and fewer guns could be heard firing. Both survivors hurried to the Dumpster, and dove in. Zoey slammed the lid behind them, and then they were in total darkness.

Their hiding place was half full, and smelled like rotting food, but Louis noted that most of what he sat on was dry. Zoey was positioned uncomfortable on top of him, her elbow digging into his chest. He grabbed her, adjusting her slightly to lay more comfortably on him. Both survivors breathed heavily, but neither one wanted to make a sound. By Louis' watch, barely five minutes had passed when the last gunshot sounded off. Zoey tried to turn her head toward Louis, and then whispered, "Do you think those survivors managed to-" A rending scream from outside cut her off. She didn't bother to finish her sentence after the scream died down.

The pair sat in that Dumpster for another hour. Zoey had herself wrapped around Louis, her head on his chest. Their breath was shallow and bated for the first ten minutes, but they started to relax as it became increasingly clear that the horde didn't know where they were. They didn't speak to one another; only listened to the scuffing footfalls and the guttural growls outside. After a half hour, even those seemed to die down.

Zoey's body was warm; her heart beat in synch with his. While there wasn't much to be said for their choice of hiding place, Louis wasn't uncomfortable. He reached up and put his hand on her head, rubbing her hair. It was soft, if greasy from sweat. "Okay," he muttered as he did so, "let's get out of here!"

"Zombies or no zombies, I can't sit in here anymore." " Zoey agreed.

They lifted the lid and stiffly climbed out of their claustrophobic can. Louis stretched his arms out and popped his sore neck. Zoey crept toward the mouth of the alley. "Fuck," she muttered.

Louis came up behind her and surveyed the street. There were at least thirty zombies scattered among the area. Many of them were sitting or wandering, and they seemed much more docile and less unified than they had been when they arrived.

"Wow. Did _any_ of them decide to leave?" Louis complained.

"What do we do?" Zoey asked.

"Well," Louis glanced over his shoulder at rest of the alley behind them. It terminated in the rear wall of a tall building, and the only exits were two metal doors that were undoubtedly locked. There was no escape that way. "We _could_ try to shoot our way past these zombies. We've done it before." He remembered the standoff at the elementary school.

"Okay. Shoot _all _the zombies." Zoey muttered, unconvinced. "Got a plan B, Hannibal?"

"We crawl back into the Dumpster and hope they go away on their own."

Zoey popped the clip out of her gun, checked the ammunition in it, and reloaded it. "Let's fight."

"Alright," Louis checked both of his weapons, then tucked the Uzi away and drew the pistol he had scavenged off Kirk Hemphill's corpse. "We need to be careful about this. Whatever was driving these dead-heads to attack earlier seems to have worn off now. They look sluggish and spaced out... maybe this is how these things sleep." The pair walked out into the street. One zombie, pacing nearby, turned to face them dumbly. Louis blew its brains out and looked around warily. Most of the zombies didn't even react, but a couple of the closest ones were turning their way.

"Methodically," Louis instructed reassuringly, taking out the two who were rising with quick, curt shots. "Cut down the stragglers first. Try not to provoke all of them."

Zoey put a bullet into the forehead of one that was rising right in front of her, and then put two more into the chest of a woman who turned to face them. In this fashion, they managed to clear over a dozen zombies. However, the more they fired in the dozing horde's presence, the more aggravated the others became.

"Lou, I don't think we can keep this up." Zoey said, glancing around her. None of the zombies were still lying down, and now they were running at the pair in threes and fours, from both ends of the street.

"We got most of 'em down, Zo." Louis replied, "Now we clean up the rest." Gone were the methodical, rhythmic gunshots. Now, both survivors were quickening their trigger pulls, sacrificing accuracy for speed to keep what was left of the horde at bay.

Louis was being grossly optimistic when he said most of them were down; at least twenty zombies still remained.

"Reloading!" Zoey called, dropping a spent clip to her feet and pushing in another one. When Louis' gun emptied, and he felt the slide on the barrel shoot back for the final time, he holstered the weapon and pulled out the Uzi, spraying his remaining half-clip into the faces of the approaching horde. The gun didn't succeed in downing all of Louis' opponents, but it managed to clear a path that the pair could retreat through. Louis nudged Zoey, and then the two survivors sprinted through the gap, hurrying toward the row of shops at the T-junction at the end of the street. Beyond these shops, looming in the skyline, was their destination; the Morpheus Hotel.

Zoey fired a few bullets into the glass display window of the Chinese restaurant at the end of the road, and the glass shattered in time for the two survivors to hop through the opening. Inside, they hurried through a door marked "Employees Only" which led into a kitchen, and Louis slammed the door shut behind them. He unplugged a stove and jammed it between the door and a row of counters. It was a loose fit, with only a few inches leeway. The zombies slammed it repeatedly, but it wouldn't give. They were safe.

"Serving them up nicely to me, Lou." Zoey said with a smile. She was peering through the service window, through which the chefs would hand their food to the waitresses. Presently, this small, narrow window was jammed with zombie hands and faces. Zoey dispatched the creatures easily.

Louis smirked. "May as well save your ammo, Zoey." He said, "These guys can't get to us."

Zoey leaned against the counter, not taking her eyes off the zombies trying to reach through the window. "What the hell was that?" She asked. "That horde attack? That's more precision than fucking zombies should have!"

She was right. When the zombies had attacked the group of survivors in the building, they'd done it with cunning. They surrounded the building, striking from multiple angles, cooperating... Louis had seen these breaching strategies employed before – in SWAT movies. And the guys in the building, however many there had been, didn't expect it.

Louis realized then how odd it was that the zombies hadn't attacked Zoey and him. They had both been out in the open, while the others were indoors. It's as if the zombies already had their targets chosen. As if they were... directed to it.

"Shit, Louis!" Zoey cried, "zombies can't move in packs! It's... it's not _fair!"_ She wiped sweat out of her eyes, pushing back a wayward clump of hair while she did so.

_She's tired_, he thought to himself. _Hell, I'm tired. At what other time in my life have I ever spent this much time on my feet, alert?_ He realized how much he missed television. Even his office seemed like a welcome respite at this point.

"I have half a mind to just stay here," Zoey said, as if answering his thoughts. "Hell, it's secure." She gestured to the blocked door. "Not as nice as the school was, but what can you do?"

"I can think of a nicer safehouse. Maybe a penthouse suite."

Zoey lowered the knife. "I'm sold. Lead on, Macduff."

Louis pushed the backdoor open, and they were met with a wide alley, which peeled off in multiple directions. Straight ahead, between two tall buildings, was a large downtown street. Across that street was their building.

"That's not the quote," Louis reprimanded good-naturedly. "The actual quote is 'Lay on.' "

The two stepped into the alley's intersection, each covering a different entry point with their guns ready. "I didn't think you would know Shakespeare."

"'Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries _Hold! enough_!' " Louis punctuated the last two words with a pair of pistol shots, which felled the Infected woman in the alley before him. "I went through a phase in college."

"Just when I thought you weren't mundane _enough_!" Zoey grunted the final word, and Louis turned in alarm to see her on her back on the ground, a strong, athletic-looking zombie holding her down. Her knife was in its neck, but that didn't seem to be stopping it.

Louis kicked the creature off her, and then shot it once in the head. He helped Zoey to her feet. "What about you?" He asked. "What does Zoey do in her spare time?"

"Aside from this?" She asked, gesturing at the dead zombie sarcastically. "Not much... School, TV, jogging... and I used to go to the firing range with my dad. He's a cop."

"That would explain why you're such a good shot."

Zoey blushed. "I also hunted with him. That's where I learned how to breathe and fire under pressure. Never thought it'd actually be useful in real life."

"He sounds like an interesting man."

"He is. If anybody would be able to survive this shit, it'd be him." Zoey didn't look convinced as she said this. Louis put his hand on her shoulder. "Your parents are fine, Zo. The news says we got the worst of it here in Fairfield. You can call them when we get to the hotel. I'm sure they were just incapacitated this morning." He regretted the use of the word _incapacitated_. He didn't like its connotations.

They emerged into a city street, and the hotel loomed above them. MORPHEUS shone in bright letters at the top of the immense building. Fortunately, the Morpheus was on the outskirts on downtown, and the street was sparsely populated. Beyond the brightly-lit hotel the survivors saw Mercy Hospital, an even taller sentinel of Fairfield, standing tall in the heart of downtown.

They crossed the street with relatively little incident – this had been the direction from which the previous horde had come, and this street was bare in comparison. There were still Infected, but they were few and far between, and they seemed to be in the same lazy state that the past horde had been in. The street was wide, and Louis and Zoey managed to hurry past all of them, only needing to pause once so Zoey could put a bullet in the skull of a woman in her path.

There was a red awning in front of the entrance, with MORPHEUS written across it. The awning had collapsed on one side, where a motorcycle had crashed into it – a black chopper. The motorbike lay still and dead, its headlight shattered. A man lay pinned beneath the chopper, motionless. He wore a leather vest, and his long brown hair was soaked in blood. His skin was grey, and there was a bullet hole in his head.

"I've seen this guy before," Zoey said, looking at the biker.

"Think he was one of the ones from yesterday?"

"I'm sure of it. He knocked out the cop's emergency light with a bat."

"Then we need to be extra careful, there may be more inside."

The Morpheus' double doors were glass, like the doors of Louis' building. However, the doors had brass bars running along them, which served the dual purpose of adding aesthetic appeal and protecting the glass from would-be vandals. In Louis' case, it would protect the two survivors from zombies trying to break in. The building had no ground-floor windows. Louis and Zoey passed under the red awning of the Morpheus, and Louis held open the door.

"Thank you kindly, sir." Zoey said with a mocking nod. Her face was completely serious, however, and she had her pistol raised as she entered the room. They had come too far to let their guard down. Louis followed, making sure the door closed behind him.

"Jesus..." Louis muttered as he looked around the room. The Morpheus, in addition to being Fairfield's largest hotel, was also its most reputable and luxurious. It was decorated in an Imperial style, with cream-coloured walls and elaborate gold trim lining every corner and vertice. A sprawling chandelier hung from the high ceiling, and a massive fountain still gushed in the center of the room. The floor was tiled in black and white, and four ballrooms branched off from the main atrium. Opposite the two survivors was a massive marble desk. On either side of this desk were two sets of marble stairs, which wound upward to meet at a landing just above the desk. Their banisters appeared to be stone, though like the walls they were trimmed with gold. Upon this landing were the elevators, apparently one of the only true concessions to modernity on the entire floor.

"Christ." Zoey finished. The Morpheus, nice as it was, had clearly been the stage of an intense battle. The Infected sprawled all over the floor. The cream walls were spattered with blood, and corpses leaned upon them. The bloodied body of a bellhop lay over the marble desk, and a maid dangled over the landing. Two bodies floated in the fountain, which was circulating water that was stained red. The bodies themselves were bloated and water-logged. The ballroom doors had been blown open, and glass littered the tiled floor. The shards sparkled like diamonds from the chandelier's glow. Bullet cartridges also glowed on the floor, albeit more dimly. Most appeared to be pistol shells, although there were also a few that appeared to be from a shotgun. The entire room stank of death and decomposition.

The pair stood speechless for a long time before Louis said, "Well, I guess we should check in." Zoey managed a macabre smile and went to the desk, sweeping behind it with her gun. As soon as she realized it was clear, she checked the phone. "There's a dial tone!" She exclaimed excitedly. "I can call my parents."

Louis checked the ballrooms as he crossed. When he reached the desk he put his hand over hers, and slowly lowered the phone. The excitement in the girl's face energized him, and lifted his spirits, but through it all her fatigue still showed. "Let's do it from up top." He said. "The last thing we need is to get ambushed down here."

They mounted the steps to the landing, and Louis called the elevator. While they waited, they surveyed the foyer below.

"God, with all these bodies this place looks like the mansion from Scarface. How many zombies are down there?" Zoey asked.

"At least twenty," Louis replied. "And I saw a lot more in the ballrooms. All dead, though."

"We're almost there." Zoey muttered. "I can't believe we're almost safe."

"Don't get complacent," Louis warned. "I don't want anything to happen to you this close to safety. We're gonna get upstairs, barricade all the doors, make sure there aren't any fire escapes, and _then_ we can relax." He smiled at the last part.

"Got it, Boss." Zoey smirked. "Then I guess we should make ready in case something bad comes out of that elevator." With that, she turned back toward the elevator doors and raised her pistol. Louis did the same. The elevator car reached the ground floor with a _ding_, and the doors opened. The survivors tensed.

There were two corpses in the car. The first, in his dapper vest and hotel cap with the monogrammed _MH_, was obviously the liftman. He was extremely grey, his flesh mottled, and he had a horrific, massive hole in his chest. The second corpse had no head, although she was obviously a woman. She wore a bloodied tank top under a leather biker vest. A shotgun lay on the floor, and her brains were splattered all over the elevator walls. She had killed herself. Judging from the awful bite mark on her ankle, Louis could have guessed why.

The smell that wafted out was horrible, and both survivors retched. Neither one vomited, however. In a depressing way, Louis thought to himself, they were starting to get used to corpses in elevator cars.

They stepped into the car and began the long, horrible journey to the top floor. The Morpheus, in keeping with the dignified atmosphere it exuded, played Vivaldi in the background.

It seemed that some things never changed no matter what the circumstances, for neither survivor spoke on the ride up. Given the state of the car's interior, and its previous occupants, Louis was loathe to even open his mouth. _If the Virus is airborne, this would be the place to get it_, he thought miserably to himself, while watching the buttons light up on the control panel with their corresponding floor. 16, 17, 18...

Warm fingers touched his wrist, and then Zoey's hand was intertwined in his. He turned to look at her. She was staring straight ahead. Her eyes were dimmed with exhaustion as she gazed at the chrome elevator doors, yet he saw them harden as the car neared its destination. She released his hand, to hold her pistol in a two-handed grip. Louis felt the car cease its ascent, and then the doors opened.


	6. Day 8 pt 3 - The Presidential Suite

The survivors rushed into a wide hallway with two doors. The hall was immaculate, warmly lit by wall-sconced lights. A desk stood near the elevator door, with a vase resting comfortably atop it. Louis relaxed a little. If there were any zombies up here, that vase would have been the first thing to go. Beside the vase were a stack of white towels.

There were three doors in this hallway. On the left wall, not far from where they stood, was the first door. The door obviously led into the North Suite. Farther up the hall and on the right was the door to the South Suite. Then, at the end of the hallway was a third door that read **Roof Access: Employees Only**.

They neared the first door, and Louis braced himself, preparing to kick it down. Zoey put her hand on his shoulder, and produced a keycard with a smile. "Swiped this from the desk," she told him proudly. She swiped it, and the door disengaged with a click. They entered the room.

The Morpheus sported two penthouse suites, and the survivors had entered the northern one. The room was a wide semicircle, ringed with wide windows that overlooked the Fairfield skyline. Mercy Hospital was visible in the distance.

The suite was carpeted in a soft cream colour, and had walls to match. Deep couches rested in a small living area, surrounding an ornate, faux-marble fireplace. There was a bar in another corner. A fruit bowl rested on the bar, and Louis' stomach growled again, although they had been rationing their food and eating what they could at the last few safehouses. Shaded lamps and wall sconces bathed the room in dim, romantic light. Under normal circumstances, Louis thought to himself, he never would have found himself in a hotel room as perfect as this.

They could see one of the two bedrooms through an open door. The bed, a king-size, appeared soft and inviting. Louis saw Zoey tremble at the sight of it, but she stood firm.

Their guns were still drawn and ready. In spite of everything, Louis wasn't ready to believe they were out of the woods yet. The pair checked every room with practiced quickness and efficiency; they glanced behind doors, checked closets and made sure no stone was left unturned. Finally, convinced that they were alone, they holstered their weapons. Zoey's pink hoodie, spattered with the blood of former Fairfield residents, was discarded unceremoniously onto the floor. Louis hung his suit jacket, also stained in blood and filth, on the back of an ornately carved wooden chair. Then he sunk into a couch with a loud, prolonged sigh, idly loosening his tie with one hand. He instantly realized how sore he was, as sharp numbness flared in every muscle in his body.

Zoey collapsed on the couch opposite him, sprawling herself out in a prone position. In one hand she held a cordless phone. She smiled over at Louis. "No offense, Lou," she said, "But it sure will be nice to hear a voice from the outside, for a change!"

"Make the call, Zo."

She hammered out a number, and the hotel was hushed as she anticipated an answer. A minute passed, and then two. Finally, Zoey put the phone down. "Dad's voicemail." She said. "I'll try my Mom." She dialled another number. "Come on," she whispered frantically into the phone. "Come on, damn it, pick up! Pick up!" But there must have been no answer, because a second later she tossed the phone away with a cry and buried her head in her hands.

Louis rose from his couch and sat down on the armrest of her chair. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and buried her head in his lap. "They're dead, Lou!" She cried. "They're dead or... or, they're..."

Louis stroked her hair. "They can't be dead," he said lamely. "Not after everything you've told me about your dad. Besides, things aren't half as bad out there as they are in here!" _Are they? _It had been a day since they'd had any radio contact from the outside world. Last they'd heard, infections were being contained in multiple cities. _A day may as well be an eternity, though. _It didn't seem too big of a stretch that there had been a quarantine breach somewhere.

Louis remembered the first night that things had gone to hell (_was that really just last night?_); the night he had killed Rachel. He remembered the stories of the army restricting access out of the city. He remembered the young soldiers in the subway, and the dead businesswoman at their feet, shot by their own guns. The military was doing everything they could to contain the virus, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. _But that might not be enough_. Louis thought back to the radio, that very morning, saying that good Samaritans were smuggling people out of the city. Were these Samaritans the ones who were dooming the human race? What about Louis and Zoey, hoping to flag down a helicopter and get out of Dodge themselves? What if they were Carriers?

Zoey broke down into sobs, and Louis held her tighter. _Doom and gloom_. He thought to himself. _This is what we've spent the last fifteen hours fighting for? _They deserved a better reward for their trials.

"We're getting out of here, Zo." Louis said finally. "We're getting out of Fairfield, and we're going to find your parents. The Internet at the library mentioned martial law in Pennsylvania. Maybe they blocked cellular lines in Philadelphia just like they did Fairfield." _If that were the case, Genius_, Louis thought to himself, _the call would terminate, not go to voicemail. She doesn't need to be an IT analyst – which, Lou, I might remind you that you ARE – to see through that crock_. Still, he tilted her chin up and smiled, and she took some comfort in that.

"You know what we need?" Louis suggested. "A bath, and maybe a drink."

Zoey's smile disappeared. "You think that's a good idea?"

Louis wrinkled his nose at her. He could still smell the garbage on both of them. "I think the bath's a great idea. We'll go one at a time. The other person can keep watch, though I doubt any zombies are going to be climbing twenty-six floors up the walls of this building for a bite of us!"

Zoey wiped a clump of filthy, matted hair out of her eyes. Twin tear-streaks ran down her dirty face. "A bath does sound lovely." She said.

"Go on, then."

Zoey headed for the large, luxurious bathroom. Louis' eyes followed her enviously. He had seen the size of the Jacuzzi in the bathroom. He caught a glimpse of her sad eyes before she disappeared into the bathroom, however, and the envy soured into pity.

_She has no idea if her family's alive or dead._ _She's physically, mentally, and emotionally spent._ Louis was no better, but he'd at least had the benefit of talking to his brother earlier in the day. That talk had rejuvenated him more than any amount of sleep would have, and yet Zoey was robbed of even that small blessing.

Thinking of his family, Louis looked over at the phone, discarded on the other couch. He crossed the room to it and dialled his mother's house again. There was an answer on the second ring.

"Louis?" It was Juice again, unmistakeably, but he sounded different; Drawn, tired, and less like his normal self.

"Still alive. These guys can't bump me off that easy." Louis replied, half to lighten his brother up, half out of sheer pride for his own survival.

"Listen, Lou, it's happening here. There was an outbreak in Miami, and its spreading like wildfire. People are saying it's the humidity, this virus thrives off it."

"You believe that?"

"Does it matter? Either way, the Army is everywhere. CEDA officials are flying overhead, telling all of us to head to the Orangeco Works."

In Louis' hometown, the Orangeco Works was an abandoned fruit factory. It was a massive complex that was maintained by the government. The sheer size of it made it an ideal place to contain all the members of the small town... but with all the ground floor windows, it made a poor fortress.

"Don't go, Juice." Louis advised. "They're trying to round you up. I've seen these government guys do some pretty sick shit down here to keep things contained."

Juice barked a laugh at that. "You _really_ think I'd do what CEDA says? I saw what happened during Katrina. _Fuck_ these assholes!"

"Juice, you're gonna need to find a secure place to take Mom, and you're going to need to fortify it. I mean boards over windows and doors, and all that Romero shit."

"It's that bad?"

"You have no idea. Prepare for the worst. Stockpile food and water. Buy it, loot it, I don't give a damn. And if you don't have any guns over there, _find some_."

"I must have something in my ears, because I thought I just heard my Boy Scout brother tell me to _steal guns_."

"Your Boy Scout brother is telling you to _Be Prepared_, Juice."

"I love you, Bro."

"I told you earlier not to start with that." Louis felt tears welling up in his eyes now, and he quickly wiped them with the back of his hand. "I'll be out of here soon, and then I'm headed straight for you guys."

"Don't think I can't hear the tears, you sissy." Juice remarked, and Louis barked a laugh. Then, glancing over at the bathroom, he suddenly thought of something else. "I'm travelling with a young woman right now. I don't know exactly where her family lives, but I know it's somewhere in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Can you tell me how they're holding out up there?"

"Bro..." Juice's voice choked. "The infection spread in Philadelphia harder and faster than it did Fairfield. But without rivers surrounding it, they had no way to contain the spread of the virus. The entire city was carpet bombed this afternoon."

Louis looked away from the bathroom door, and now the tears flowed unchecked. "Goodbye, Juice. Keep them safe."

"Later," Juice replied, and hung up. Louis wondered if he would ever hear his brother's voice again, and if it was a mistake not to speak to his mother. He wiped his eyes again. "We're getting out of here," he said to himself. "I'll talk to her in Florida." Suddenly he was glad he didn't speak with her – he doubted he'd have the strength to go on after hearing her voice. Even now, all he wanted was to crawl into a corner and let somebody else take control of the situation. He wasn't a leader! He was a mid-level white collar employee with a handful of interns under his direct control, he wasn't qualified to cross a hostile city, let alone take care of another person in the process! If there was any time he could use the counsel of a parent, it was now. But he feared that his mother's voice would simply be poison to his willpower.

_Regression, _he thought to himself incredulously. _A coping mechanism where your mind retreats into the role of a child_. _Am I fucking regressing right now?_ He felt a little better when he put a name to the feeling, and he tossed the phone away. It was tough getting up off the couch again, but soon he was pacing the suite, and he walked up to the window wall. Looking past his own gaunt, tired reflection, he could see the city beyond. The scene was one of complete normalcy – many lights had been left on in apartments and offices, creating an illusion of a bustling night life that Louis knew to be nonexistent. _More like a bustling night undeath_, he thought. In the distance, the bright green sign of Mercy hospital seemed to beckon him, as if he was a fly and Mercy the trap that would ensnare him. "Happy thoughts," he muttered to himself. "Come on, Lou, this isn't like you at all. Name three good things about your life right now. Three good things."

Two days ago, those three good things had been his great apartment, his fiscally rewarding (if emotionally unfulfilling) job, and his burgeoning physique. Now the former two were shattered, and the latter... he again regarded his reflection in the mirror. It looked almost emaciated to him, although he knew he couldn't have changed _that_ much in a day, and it was probably in his head. Still...

"Three good things... One, I'm alive." He turned around to regard the luxurious room that surrounded him. "Two, I found a great place to stay..."

The bathroom door opened at that moment, and Zoey stepped out. She was followed by a large cloud of aromatic, soapy steam. Her skin was scrubbed pink, and thought most of her hair was turban-wrapped in a towel, a few loose strands played across her face and shimmered in the sconce-lighting. Her body was wrapped up in a large, white towel with the monogrammed _MH_ on it. Although she held the towel up modestly with her left hand, her right loosely gripped her pistol. Her eyes were red, and Louis knew that she'd taken the opportunity to let out her pent-up grief, but she was smiling now.

"Three," Louis muttered.

"What? No platter laid out for me?" Zoey teased, glancing at the empty bar. "You go clean up, Lou, I'm gonna see what they have to eat in this place."

He smiled and nodded, and then stepped into the bathroom. It was a large room, lit by six lights above the mirror that were shaded in brown. The entire room was fogged up, like a sauna, and Louis felt the tension leaving his muscles before he even turned the taps on the tub. He undressed quickly, dropping his blood-stained, garbage-scented clothes in the corner near the door. Then, seeing a tube of new toothpaste, he immediately started scrubbing at his teeth with his finger. He rubbed his teeth until his finger hurt, and then he guzzled some tap water to spit the toothpaste out. When that ritual was finished, he rubbed a section of fog off the mirror and glanced at his reflection – he was thinner and leaner, if only slightly. His stomach growled audibly at the thought, and he felt nauseous at the notion of filling up with more Power Bars. He guessed that he had many hungry days ahead of him, as the world descended further into chaos. _Many hungry days,_ he smiled at the reflection, _see, the optimism's already creeping back._ It was true. With Zoey at his side, he couldn't foresee a scenario where they didn't survive the next few days at least. This comforting thought in mind, he stepped into the soapy bathwater.

The liquid was hot – almost unbearably so. Louis didn't care, though. He could feel his sore muscles relaxing and loosening, and while he would probably be stiff for a few more days to come, it just drove home his happy feeling: _I can do this! I can survive Armageddon_. He slumped down until the water was neck level and, grabbing a nearby sponge, started scrubbing at his body. He was amazed, and slightly disgusted, by how quickly the water discoloured.

There was a knock at the bathroom door. "You decent, Lou?"

His body hidden under a layer of soap, bubbles, and now a nearly opaque grime, Louis shouted an affirmative. Zoey popped her head in. "I found a washing machine in the bedroom! I'm gonna throw our clothes in!" She said. "Also, there's wine and fruit on the bar!" She swilled a wine glass in one hand, while with the other she picked up Louis' clothing.

"I don't think those pants are machine-wash!" Louis called good-naturedly.

"They are now!" Zoey called back before closing the door again.

Louis was out of the bath ten minutes later, feeling clean, refreshed, and hungry. He wondered if he would ever have a bath again as he watched the filthy water slip down the drain. He concluded that it would probably be awhile. "Oh, well," he sighed, towelling himself off with the first of a mountain of white, monogrammed towels. He wrapped another towel around his waist, grabbed his gun, and left the bathroom. He saw Zoey sitting on the couch facing him, still wearing her towel, wine glass in one hand and legs crossed. She was munching on a grape from the fruit bowl she had stolen from the bar and placed on the coffee table. The fireplace, a gas-powered unit, was flaring nearby. It gave off a nice heat, though it lacked the comforting crackle of a true wood fire. Louis joined her after pouring himself a glass of wine.

"Bring the bottle!" She called.

Louis settled on the other couch with a reprimanding smile. "You probably shouldn't drink _too _much. We might need to leave in a hurry." He was currently very aware of the fact that he was barefoot. Nudity aside, he felt vulnerable without his shoes. "I know the chances of any unexpected guests are slim, but we should still be careful."

"Alright, I'll take it easy!" Zoey rolled her eyes, and took a small sip from her glass. "You sound like my dad!" A look of pain crossed her face at that statement, but she quickly wiped it away. She was done crying for the night.

"Tell me about yourself," Louis interjected suddenly, hoping to get the girl's mind off her parents. "Not just the school stuff, either – tell me about _yourself_, about _Zoey_."

She smirked. "Guess."

"Don't make me do this..."

"Nope. You have to guess."

Louis sighed, and then thought over everything he knew about her. It wasn't much, he realized. They were basically still strangers, acquainted mostly through circumstance. It was interesting, then, that he already couldn't remember a time when she wasn't at his side. His days as an IT analyst seemed like ancient history, although his last work day was only yesterday.

"Well, I know you're a film buff. You certainly refer to movies a lot. Video games, too. Not to mention your film school. You look like you exercise," she grinned unintentionally at the compliment, and he continued. "but downtime is your pleasure. You have a wardrobe of tank tops and hoodies, you're rarely up before noon – or at least _I _never saw you before noon – and an evening spent in front of a TV with a bowl of popcorn is considered a great first date."

She smiled slyly at the last sentence, and poured herself another glass of wine. Louis finished off his own glass, and she also poured him a cup. "So that _was_ a date?" She leaned back on the couch again and took a sip. "Okay, let _me_ do _you_ now..."

"Please, what could you possibly know about me?" Louis smirked. It wasn't that he considered himself a mysterious person, but he certainly couldn't remember sharing much over their few weeks of knowing each other – the meat of which consisted of their day-long marathon of survival that came to this pleasant intermission just an hour ago.

"Well, first thing is you're hot-" Louis' face flushed, but Zoey ignored it, "and you're aware of it. That's why you watch what you eat, and work out constantly – I saw the workout equipment when I was in your house yesterday. In fact, a lot of your lifestyle is based around your appearance."

_She was in my house for five minutes,_ Louis thought, marvelling at her observation skills while also resenting her analysis of his vanity.

"In addition to this fitness craze, you dress yourself in expensive looking clothes. It isn't enough to own a suit for work, it has to be a designer suit. Your shoes alone probably cost more than that wardrobe of mine that you mentioned earlier." Louis searched for resentment in her voice, but only found amusement. She continued, "And you quoted Shakespeare. I'm sure you're very well-versed in many classics. Hell, I'll bet you recognized that classical piece in the elevator as we were coming up here."

_Vivaldi, Spring. _Louis said nothing.

"You like to impress people. I'd say it's a need to be liked, but... you could get away with that well enough just by your personality. No, with the clothes, the car, the classy tastes... it's a power thing."

Louis raised his eyebrows. "I can't tell if you're complimenting me or not anymore."

Zoey smiled at him. "I like you, so obviously you're good at what you do. And it isn't a crime to take pride in the things you own. If you got it, flaunt it, right?" Another sip of wine. "God, I wonder when we'll get another chance to do this!" She marvelled. "To think, there was a time in our lives when we could do this every night!" Her face went sombre. "Listen to me, I'm a regular fountain of optimism tonight."

Louis moved to sit next to her, and she nestled into the crook of his arm. "Have I thanked you, yet?" She asked him.

"For what?"

"I might talk a big game, Lou, but the truth is that without you, I doubt I would have even gotten out of that apartment building. If you weren't there when Rachel turned..." Her voice cracked. "I don't think I'd have been able to do what you did. Not back then. Christ, even with all the movies I've seen, all the books I've read, all the scenarios I've imagined... the real thing just isn't the same. I always rolled my eyes when some dumb, doe-eyed bimbo couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger on her zombified friend, but when it's somebody _you_ love..." With a grimace, she downed another glass of wine. She started reaching for the bottle again, but Louis kept it from her by using it to slowly refill his own glass.

"Trust me, if it wasn't for my landlord coming at me five minutes earlier, I might've been in the same boat as you. But once you take one look into those eyes, you know that the person you once loved is gone for good, and thank God for that. Once we got out of that building, though, I swear you did all the real work! I was just around to give directions."

Zoey shook her head, but Louis insisted, "No. You really were amazing." He looked into her eyes. "There isn't anybody else in the world I'd rather have at my side during this mess."

"Well, Louis Randall," Zoey raised the empty glass, "The feeling's mutual!"

He poured her only half a glass, and they toasted to their survival, and their evening. They talked for awhile longer – Louis told stories of his childhood in Florida with his brothers, Zoey told of her turbulent teenage years during her parents' divorce and how she turned to movies as her escape – before her dad introduced her to what he referred to as "Shoot-'em-Up Therapy."

A silence finally stretched out between them. Louis broke it by yawning. "Well, we should probably get to bed." He checked his watch. It was only 11PM, although it felt much later. "We need to get up early tomorrow, so we can get on this roof and try to flag down a helicopter."

"Ugh," Zoey rose groggily from the couch, still keeping one hand protectively over the fold of her towel. "Good plan, Batman."

"Don't worry about the laundry. I'll throw it in the dryer before I go to bed," Louis said, also rising. "I saw some toothpaste in that bathroom!" He called helpfully to Zoey.

"Most girls would be offended by the implica – by the implications of that statement!" She called back as she stumbled into the bathroom..

"Sorry?" Louis offered.

"I'm not most girls!" She called back. "Besides, zombie apocalypses net you a pass!"

The door closed behind her, and she was out of his sight again. He went to the washing machine, and though it wasn't quite done its cycle, he started throwing the clothes into the dryer. As he did so, he cast a remorseful glance at his suit jacket – visibly wrinkled beyond repair. The pants would be bad as well, but less so. Then, checking to make sure any buzzers on the dryer were switched off (they were), he turned the machine on. He crossed the hotel to one of the bedrooms.

Although his mind was bleary from exhaustion and alcohol, and although his legs felt like they would give up on him at any moment, he still took a moment to admire the king-sized bed lying before him. He was certainly in for the best sleep of his life.

_Three good things,_ he thought to himself. _Hotel bed, hotel bed, hotel bed._

He suddenly felt hands clasp his sides, and although he was initially startled, he immediately noticed that the hands were warm. "That's not the only thing zombie apocalypses net you." A female voice whispered seductively into his ear, and the hands moved to his chest and abdomen.

"Zoey..." The name came out a sigh, though Louis didn't mean it to. "You're drunk."

She dipped a couple fingers teasingly under the hem of his towel. "What are you talking about? It's the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine."

He groaned, and next thing he knew he was grabbing her and throwing her onto the bed. Her towel flew off in the process, but neither one of them noticed as their lips met.

Zoey writhed under him, creating wonderful friction while also working to dislodge the towel still wrapped around his waist. He brought his face down into her neck as she finally succeeded in her task, throwing the towel away. She grabbed him with the same hand, and started stroking.

She moaned his name as he continued to kiss her neck, and work his way down to her breasts – when suddenly, an image came unbidden into his mind. It was Philadelphia, burning. People burning, and dying, while military jets dropped napalm from above and Zoey's own parents writhed in the flames! He remembered the businesswoman at the subway, gunned down by soldiers, and Mrs. Wilson in his apartment building. He remembered Kirk Hemphill, who took his own life hoping to save his soul. He remembered the leather-vested corpse in the elevator, but most of all he remembered the Infected, hundreds of them – thousands – with their white eyes and their gray skin, carrying their stench of death.

"Oh, God!" Zoey gasped, bucking her hips against his leg. "I need this, Louis!"

Louis' tongue darted over Zoey's nipple, but he was remembering the moment when she shot that twelve year old zombie boy in the face. He ran his hands down her navel and slid his fingers inside her, and she gasped with pleasure, but all he could hear was her sobs as she stared down at Rachel's body.

Louis stopped kissing her. He suddenly noticed he was no longer hard. Zoey stopped moaning, and stopped stroking. "What's wrong?" She asked him. Louis shut his eyes and shook his head. "We've... we've been through a lot of shit today, Zo. I... I can't."

"What do you mean?" She asked, and now Louis was getting up off her, and sitting up. She got to her feet indignantly. "Is it out of some... misplaced sense of honour? Because I'm drunk? I'm not a little girl, Louis, you don't need to protect me! Not with this!"

He shook his head. "It's not that, Zo, not at all. We've... seen people die."

Zoey paced the room in front of him, still naked. She had a beautiful body – even in his distracted state, Louis could see that. Mentally he was cursing himself, although he knew that no matter how much he wanted to, he wouldn't be able to make love to her tonight with those images so fresh in his mind.

"That's my point, Lou." Zoey's anger was subsiding, being replaced by something else. Tears were rolling down her cheeks again. "We could be dead tomorrow. This could be our last chance to... live!"

"We aren't dying tomorrow, Zo. I won't let it happen. That's a promise. We may do this someday... and when we do, it'll be for the right reasons."

Zoey sat down next to Louis, and shook her head incredulously. "Fuck. Of course I get stuck in a zombie apocalypse with Mr. Spock. You must think I'm a total whore!"

"We all handle grief differently, Zo." Louis replied, "You and I have lost a lot this week. Some people lash out by screaming, or breaking things..." _Or mental regression_, he thought to himself, recalling his earlier desire to just crawl into a corner and shut down. "I get it if sex is how you take your mind off what's going on. Shit," he chuckled, "I _wish_ I could deal with it like that."

Zoey smiled weakly. "Guess this is karma for me going all psychoanalyst on you earlier, huh? I can tell you one thing, Lou... Next time I'm watching a horror movie, and two of the characters just decide to up and fuck in the middle of the killer's rampage... I don't think I'll laugh at it."

"Let's get some sleep, Zo."

"Mind if I sleep in here tonight?" Zoey asked. "I can grab my gun."

Louis didn't mind... he realized that he'd grown extremely used to having her around, to the point where even that twenty minutes where she was bathing seemed somewhat alien. He got up and shut the door, though he left all the lights on ("may as well_"_, Zoey said, "I could sleep through a Midnight Riders concert at this point."). They crawled under the bedcovers together, although Louis insisted he sleep on top of the inner bed sheet to keep a layer of fabric between them. Zoey made another Mr. Spock comment at this, but nestled up into him anyway. He could still feel her body warmth through the thin fabric, and he was grateful for that.

"Hey, Lou?"

"Yeah?"

"Wouldn't it suck if we went to sleep right now, and then woke up yesterday morning at the school and had to do this all over again, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?"

Louis fell asleep to that thought.


	7. Day 9 pt 1 - The Rooftop

**About 90% of this story so far has been Louis' POV, but I'm going to start changing it up a bit from this point onward, because I don't want to give the impression he's the main character. This is an ensemble piece, he just happened to have been introduced first.**

Thunder boomed overhead, and a light rain began to patter upon his head. "Well, that's just great!" He yelled. "That's just fucking dandy!"

He was sitting beneath the awning of some corner store, inspecting the various scrapes up and down his arms and legs. Those damn things had some teeth on them, that was for sure. He was probably going to turn pretty soon – Bobby had turned in minutes after being bit. Still, no sense feeling sorry for himself. A bottle of rum rested on a step nearby.

A breeze carried the rain under the awning. He picked up his shotgun from where it lay nearby, and rose to his feet. "I hate rain." He got up with a grunt, limping on an ankle that was sprained at best, broken at worst. That had been a hell of a crash.

Things had been going great for Francis as little as six hours ago – he and his gang had been riding through the town, murdering monsters in what must have been the greatest vampire killing spree this side of Transylvania. In fact, the last thirty six hours had been one big, half-drunk Bacchanalia for the Hell's Legion Fairfield Branch, whose activities were usually limited to mild vandalism, bar fights and disobeyed city noise bylaws. Last night, the twelve standing members of the Hell's Legion rode out on their seven choppers, dispensing street justice against the undead horde – who, for some reason, seemed to be just as dangerous during the day, contradicting every vampire story Francis had ever heard. At least four of those gang members were now dead. The others were supposedly headed for the Morpheus Hotel, where they had all hoped to score some luxury accommodations for Armageddon. Most of the male members had even scooped up some women of varying degrees of attractiveness, all of whom were all too eager to join a pack of armed survivors. The Morpheus Hotel was to play host to the final party of the civilized world.

"And now I'm going to miss it." Francis said to himself, shooting two more zombies lingering nearby. "I could be in the Morpheus Hotel right now. The Morpheus _fucking_ Hotel. Where Bobby Kennedy stayed! But no, because of you assholes..."

_BAM_, went his shotgun, sending a snarling woman flying off her feet. Numerous Infected were coming at him from all directions now.

_Ka-Chok! _"... I have to _walk_ through these streets in the pissing rain..."

_BAM!_

_Ka-Chok! _"Slowly dying of a _VAMPIRE BITE_..."

_BAM,_ the gun emptied, and Francis started swinging it like a club.

"... While the gang has the party of a lifetime without me!" He swung his shotgun. He punched with his fists. He no longer cared; it was borrowed time anyway, he might as well go out the most epic way possible. His bite wound hurt like hell, and he wondered when he was going to turn. The News reports had said it took anywhere from thirty seconds to fifteen minutes. It had been five hours now since Francis had been pulled from his bike, and that fat bitch had taken the chunk out of his arm while the Legion fled. _Every Man For Himself_. That was their gang motto. You couldn't keep up with the pack, you got left behind. Francis didn't resent them for it. The Hell's Legion was all about having a great time at the expense of others; to him, altruistic death seemed to be the opposite of that goal.

Snarling faces were everywhere. Hands scratched at him, drool slid off teeth, but he'd already taken one bite in the last six hours, and it had hurt like a sonofabitch, so he wasn't letting that happen again. In fact, Francis had been scratched, bit, struck, tackled and throttled countless times over the course of the evening. It had reached a point where these monsters' attacks no longer fazed him, which is why he didn't flee when he heard a pack of them approaching. He could hardly walk on his wounded leg. His heart beat loudly in his ears, and he knew that next time he went down, he wasn't getting back up again. At some point in the past half hour or so he'd stopped being able to see colours. He assumed that was a side effect of becoming a vampire.

Francis saw the sign looming well overhead. **MORPHEUS**. It was only a block away. Maybe the night wasn't a total loss. He pushed away two vampires with the butt of his gun and then shot them both dead with his pistol, "Maybe I'll catch that party after all!" Shoving the last one of the vampires off his back, he dispatched it quickly with his pistol. Looking around, he saw that all the undead creatures were cleared, and about twenty five bodies lay all around him. He had scratches and scrapes everywhere. His bite wound ached. His ankle killed him to put weight on, ever since the crash. The clouds broke at that moment, however, and a predawn light shone through the clouds, lifting Francis' spirit higher than it had been since he lost his bike. He would go to the Morpheus and see the gang again... and if he happened to finally turn at some point during the party... "Hell, free meal. Every Man For Himself."

* * *

Louis was the first to awaken the next morning. He dreamt of burning cities, carpet bombing jets, and snarling Infected, before finally an image of his childhood Florida home in flames jolted him into consciousness. He immediately felt Zoey, still pressed up against him. He felt the warmth of her body through the thin sheet that separated them. His arm was wrapped tightly around her. His hand was cupped over her own, which in turn was cupped over her left breast. Even through Zoey's hand, Louis could feel the heartbeat. _Life_. He flexed his arm, squeezing her body slightly, taking a second to appreciate this moment; he would use it to hold himself up if things got bad. Responding to Louis' mild moment, Zoey shifted unconsciously against him. Gently, so as not to wake her, he removed the arm and slid off the bed. She groaned at the disturbance, but didn't awaken.

Alone on the bed, Zoey rolled onto her back, filling the warm space that Louis had vacated. The covers were pulled down almost to her waist, exposing her entire upper body. Louis remembered last night, remembered how close they had come to-

He pulled the sheets gently up to her shoulders and tucked them into her arms, encasing her in a chrysalis of heat. She sighed in her sleep. Louis glanced at the two bedside tables, one on each side of the bed. Each table held a pistol on its polished, almond surface. He grabbed his weapon and walked out of the room.

He pulled on his underwear and suit pants. It was early yet, the clock read 6AM, and the survivors weren't going anywhere for a couple more hours, so Louis chose to go reject his button-up shirt in favour of his white undershirt. He hung his dress shirt up, in a futile attempt to de-wrinkle it. Not that it mattered – the garment was still pink in places from blood stains. _And the Louis who cares about such things is dead anyway_, he thought as he pulled his suit jacket out. As he'd feared the night before, the jacket had shrunk in the wash. He could barely fit it over his shoulders. He felt a twinge of pain as he took the Italian garment off and tossed it in the trash. _Okay, maybe Old Louis isn't dead... but he's on hiatus._

Louis made a pot of coffee, and while he waited for the liquid to percolate and fill the pot, he thought again of last night, of Zoey's hands all over him, his mouth on hers...

Why didn't he go through with it? Zoey thought it had to do with honour, or some such thing, but that wasn't the whole truth. It had nothing to do with her virtue or innocence or any such theory she may have concocted in her head – at least, not as much as she thought. They were both adults, and in almost any other opportunity Louis may have seized the moment – he'd practically been dreaming about it from the day he first met her in the elevator of his building. There was something on his end, mentally blocking him, pulling him out of the experience. He didn't know if it was the horrors he'd witnessed that day, or the exhaustion of coming out of a twelve hour adrenaline rush. Maybe the line he'd fed to Zoey hadn't been a complete crock, and his body simply reacted to extreme stressors differently than hers.

"This shit doesn't happen to those action movie stars." He muttered to himself, taking his first sip of coffee and relishing the taste. He sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. Most of the offered channels were simply snow now, but there were still a few active news channels. He watched a pair of attractive anchors perform their broadcasts in the usual over-expressive, impartial newscaster-voices, their eyes betraying nothing of what they were thinking as they relayed information about quarantines in thirteen states, and informed him that all travel and trade had ceased between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres in response to this crisis.

Louis watched the anchors give reports of how the flu was being contained in numerous cities. They were denouncing the stories of carpet bombings in Philadelphia as a hoax, claiming that the city had fallen victim to a massive chemical plant explosion due to lack of maintenance during the outbreak of the virus. Louis snorted at this, and at the same time glanced over his shoulder to make sure Zoey was still in her room and couldn't hear this news. He knew he couldn't keep it from her forever, but he figured she didn't need to hear it yet.

He munched on a banana as he listened to this news program, which seemed to lie to its viewers at every turn. It continued to claim that the Fairfield situation, while drastic, was "under control", with deaths "in the hundreds".

"Under control, my ass," he muttered, patting the gun in his holster. The news program went on to give misleadingly optimistic news about the status of the outbreak, before closing off with a message informing viewers to "stay indoors unless instructed otherwise by local CEDA detachments."

Louis turned the TV off and got up off the couch just as Zoey emerged from the bedroom. She had the towel wrapped around her again, and a gun in her hand. She stared at the ground as she entered. "Hey," she said sheepishly.

"Hey, back."

"Look, about last night-"

"Don't even worry about it," Louis cut her off. "Go on and get dressed, and I'll see about finding us some food."

While the suite's pantry was mostly empty, due to the modern wonder that was Room Service, Louis succeeded in hunting down a box of powdered pancake mix – nothing fancy, undoubtedly purchased by some hotel tenant who was longing for something quick, easy and familiar, and left behind by said tenant when he left. In minutes, Louis had pancakes cooking on the stove while Zoey emerged from the bedroom wearing her jeans, tank top and pink hoodie. They sat at the bar together and ate, initially saying very little, focusing mostly on devouring their meal as ravenously as they could.

"Well," Louis said after the meal, "I guess we'd better head to the roof and check on that helicopter situation!"

Zoey downed the last of her coffee. "I guess so. Fun's over, huh?" She shyly met Louis' eyes for the first time that morning.

"For now. Hopefully there will be some choppers in the air we can try to signal." Louis rose from the table and put on his dress shirt. After a moment's hesitation, he put his tie on as well. May as well. They armed themselves – both still held their pistols, since Louis' Uzi was officially spent. They were running dangerously low on ammunition, and Louis knew they would have to find some more if they weren't rescued soon.

They left the room and walked down the hall to the door marked "Roof Access – Employees Only". Past that door was a dark, narrow room with utilitarian grey steps leading up to a second door, with an Exit sign. Louis pushed this door open, and the pair was instantly bathed in the light of the morning sunrise. Warm air beat on their faces. Zoey grabbed a cinder block sitting nearby and used it to keep the door propped open while Louis crossed the roof to the heli pad. Even this early in the morning, they could see a few planes flying overhead. One seemed to be a military jet, zooming past them faster than the speed of sound. Given what he knew of Philadelphia, Louis was concerned by that jet.

There was a helicopter flying a few blocks away. Zoey, spotting it first, sprinted to the edge of the rooftop. "Hey!" She yelled. "Hey! Hey! Over here!"

"Holy shit," Louis muttered, and then he joined in. "Hey!" The two survivors waved their hands at the vehicle as it patrolled around. It was too far away, however. It was also too low, flying at least six stories beneath them.

"Shit," Zoey cursed. "As if it would've heard us, anyway."

"Don't worry," Louis replied. "We just need to wait up here a bit longer. It'll come around again!"

They heard the door slam open behind them, and then a deep voice called, "I wouldn't count on that if I were you!"

Both survivors whirled around to find a man leaning in the doorway – no, that was an understatement. He seemed to literally be using the doorway as support. His jeans were ripped and bloodied, his tattooed arms scraped and scabbed, and he had an ugly, dried out bite mark on his right forearm. He wore a black biker's vest – the same vest they had seen on the woman in the elevator – and the once-white shirt he wore beneath it was nearly blackened with filth and sweat. He was middle-aged with a hard face and receding hair shaved down close to the scalp, and a dark goatee on his chin. His shoulders heaved as he took in deep, heavy breaths. His head was cocked against the door frame, as if the sheer act of holding it up was getting to be too much worse. The man, the vagrant, looked like he had been through Hell, and was pretty much dead already.

All of this and more registered in the subconscious depths of Louis' mind as he looked at the stranger, but none of this information clicked on the surface of his consciousness. The only thing his forebrain noticed was the shotgun that the man held at his hip, levelled at the two survivors.

"Put it down!" Zoey commanded in her best cop voice, her pistol pointed at the biker. She was already slowly strafing to the side, putting a large ventilation unit between herself and the man. Louis followed her example, moving in the other direction.

"Where are they?" The stranger demanded. "I know they were here, now where are they? What'd you do to them?"

"Hey, man," Louis tried to reason, "you look like you're hurt pretty bad. Why don't you put the gun down and we can check out that nasty-"

Louis' interjection earned him the man's full attention, and now the gun was focused solely on him. "The Legion! I saw Maggot downstairs, and Tanya in the elevator!"

Louis thought of the vested woman in the elevator – the one who blew her own brains out with the shotgun – and the man who was pinned under his motorbike at the Morpheus' entrance. As he mulled them over, he heard Zoey hiss to him, "I saw this guy the other night! He was in the rear of that bike gang!"

"Shit," Louis whispered back, "I should've figured there'd be more of them around here!"

"I can hear everything you're saying!" The wounded biker called.

"Look, those people were dead when we got here!" Louis snapped back. "You saw all the zombies down in that lobby! Your friends got overwhelmed! We had nothing to do with it!"

Zoey suddenly put her gun down on the vent, and pulled out her First Aid kit, waving it at the biker. "You've been through a lot, dude, and you're hurt! Just take this, and go!"

The man glanced at the First Aid, then his eyes went back to Louis, upon whom the shotgun was still trained. "Bring it over here." He commanded.

"Zoey, don't-" Louis warned, but Zoey shot him a glance and then stepped out into the open, holding the First Aid. She furtively crossed the rooftop toward him. He never pointed the gun away from Louis, but he reached out with one of his large, muscular arms toward the girl, and the First Aid. She held it out to him.

An instant later, with a speed that caught Louis entirely by surprise, the man grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up against him, standing behind her like a human shield. Zoey screamed, and Louis shouted, but the biker didn't listen, instead firing a shotgun blast that missed Louis by about two feet. He dropped to his knees behind the vent, still pointing his pistol at the biker, when he heard the inhuman scream and saw the movement in the air.

A zombie wearing a hoodie leapt clean over Louis, jumping impossibly high for a human being. The biker tossed Zoey to the side and shot a second blast at the thing before it landed on him. Both of them crashed to the floor, motionless.

Louis bolted across the rooftop, kicking the dead zombie off of the biker. It rolled down the stairs into the hotel. The man was completely unconscious.

"Holy shit," Zoey gasped, picking herself up off the ground. "What the hell happened?"

"I think he just saved our asses." Louis mused. "I guess I was wrong. Zombies _will_ climb twenty six floors just for a bite of us."

"That was no normal zombie! Did you see that jump?"

Louis saw it, and the implications unnerved him. Suddenly their hotel sanctuary was a lot less safe than they had imagined. Was there _any_ secure haven to protect them from these damn zombies?

"We have bigger problems right now, anyway," Zoey nodded to the biker, picking up her First Aid and getting down on her knees beside his body. Louis grabbed her shoulder. "Careful! You see that bite on him? You don't know if he's infected or not!"

Zoey got back to her feet and backed away from the biker. "How long does it take to turn from a bite?" She asked.

"I think the news said it's just a few minutes." Louis replied. "But we don't know when it happened! He could've been bit right downstairs, and could be turning as we speak!"

So the pair waited and watched, both of them holding guns at the ready. A few minutes passed, and nothing happened. Louis checked his watch and started timing. Ten minutes passed. Nothing.

"I think we're safe," Zoey said finally, "but hold his arms while I do this!"

Louis obliged, kneeling down near the man's head and pinning his arms to the rooftop. "I wonder who this guy is," he mused, staring into the man's face – it was marked with frown lines, the mouth curved in a perpetual frown – or sneer. Although the biker currently looked placid in his unconscious state, Louis wondered how nice a man he was in real life.

_Who am I kidding? In this new world, all the nice men are dead._

Zoey wrapped bandages soaked in disinfectant around the man's arms, then lifted his shirt and did the same with his torso, making Louis prop the man up. Finally, she pulled up his right pant leg, which was bloody, revealing a deep gash in the man's ankle. "Holy shit," she gasped, "he was walking on this? I'm gonna need a splint, fast"

Louis nodded, and then hurried off to find something to use. Suddenly, the biker let out a moan and gripped Zoey on the shoulder. She nearly screamed, but then the man's eyes opened and met hers. He wasn't infected. The eyes were human.

"Who are you?" Zoey asked, leaning in.

"The Legion..." he gasped. "When they get here... tell them to save me some beer." Then his eyes closed again.

Zoey told Louis of these developments when he came back a minute later, holding a metal piece of rebar. She wrapped it around the biker's leg with the bandage.

"Think he's expecting more of his biker pals here?" Louis shook his head. "Shit, you saw those guys the other day, Zo. They were bad news!"

"I don't know, but this guy saved us. He saved me." Zoey replied. "When he grabbed me and flipped me around... I saw that zombie. It was a split second away from pouncing before he shot it."

"God, that happened so fast." Louis shook his head. "I'm sorry, Zoey. If he'd actually been trying to take you hostage..."

"But he wasn't, Lou, and that's all that matters now. What should we do about those other bikers he's talking about? If this ends up being some kind of gangster rendezvous point then zombies may be the least of our worries."

"It kills me to say it," Louis sighed, "But if anybody else is coming here, they'll head straight for our suite. We're going to have to abandon our room, find something a few floors down."

"I was afraid you'd say that. And what about him?" Zoey nodded down at the man. "I know he's one of them, and he held us at gunpoint for awhile, but he _did_ save us eventually."

Louis was unsure about the man. He definitely looked like bad news; covered in tattoos, with monstrous muscles and a known gang affiliation, he could prove to be a huge threat if they kept him around. They didn't know anything about the man personally, except that he was a good shot with a gun. Should they leave him up here, on this roof, in the hopes that his friends will come and claim him? _We're still Americans,_ Louis thought. _Shit, we're still HUMAN_. "We'll take him with us, and find a room to hole up in while he recovers. We'll figure out the next step after he wakes up. He doesn't look like the kind of guy you'd want guarding your back while you sleep." Louis reached out and tilted Zoey's chin up, to smile into her face. "Looks can be pretty deceiving, though." He remembered how, at one point, he thought the woman would be dead weight.

They lifted the inert biker, each taking an arm, and carried him down into the hotel, leaving the man's shotgun behind. They saw the elevator car at the end of the clean hallway, its chromic doors belying the carnage within. Both survivors retched at the thought of entering that macabre chamber of death and decay, but they stepped in nonetheless and pressed the button for the 24th floor, two stories down. This time, Louis noted, Gustav Holst's _Venus_ was playing in the background.

The elevator doors opened into a relatively dingy hallway. The wallpaper had been clawed and shredded, and blood stained the carpet. The elevator car sounded its arrival with a _ding_, and twelve zombie heads turned to the survivors at the sound.

"Oh, shit." Louis muttered.

"New floor!" Zoey cried, hitting buttons rapidly. "New floor!"

The doors started to slowly close as the zombies littering the hallway sprinted toward the survivors. "Take him!" Zoey screamed, and then Louis found himself staggering under the biker's entire weight as Zoey bent down and scooped the female biker's shotgun off the floor. She fired two quick shots into the charging mass before the doors closed on them. The creatures continued to pound on the outside of the elevator door, but then car had already started its descent. "Holy," Louis gasped. "Were all those guys only two floors beneath us the whole time?"

"Fuck!" Zoey replied. "After seeing _that_, guess I can kiss goodbye any hopes of another good night's sleep in this fucking hotel!"

"Let's be ready this time," Louis advised. "In case we meet another welcome party."

The doors opened to the 20th floor, and both survivors were tense as they stepped out. Zoey took the lead, holding her pistol defensively in front of her, checking doors left and right. Like the floor above, this level of the hotel looked like it had seen its fair share of chaos. However, only a single body lay in the corridor. _By relative terms, one body is just fine_, Louis thought to himself as he dragged the biker down the hall after Zoey.

She found an empty, clean room and walked inside. Louis followed, putting Francis down on the bed.

"Well, what now?" Louis asked. "Think he's gonna survive?"

"I'm no nurse," Zoey put her hand on the biker's forehead. "But he doesn't seem to be running a fever, I've got that leg tourniquet bound up as well as I can, and I covered up that bite. While I think I stopped any new infections from coming in, I can't speak for anything he might've picked up already."

"At least he doesn't seem to have Green. God, I'm hungry. Think there's any food on this floor?"

"Yeah. I saw a vending machine at the end of the hall. Think you can grab me something while you're out there?"

Louis raised an eyebrow. "Think that's a good idea, me leaving you here with _him_?"

"Don't fret so much, Lou! He can't be that bad, if he saved my life! Besides," she gestured down to her holster, where two pistols now rested, "I have his guns."

Louis nodded, and disappeared out the door.


	8. Day 9 pt 2 - The Apartment

Consciousness came slowly to Francis; it seemed like his senses were activating one at a time. First came touch – he felt the soft sheets upon which he lay, the tight bandages wrapped around his skin, the splint tied onto his busted ankle. Next was smell – a mixed cornucopia of laundry detergent, shampoo and soap, juxtaposed against his own personal odour of sweat and blood. He heard very little, apart from his own ragged breathing. He could still taste the liquor on his lips from earlier, as well as the sharp tang of blood.

His eyes opened, taking in the blurry image of a small room. An old TV set rested on a dresser. There was a connected bathroom, white light pouring out from within. Finally, a woman was leaning across from him, wearing pink.

Francis' hand darted for his holster, but there was nothing there. The girl, shaking her head, held his pistol up. "Looking for something?"

"Where am I?"

"20th Floor of the Morpheus." The young woman leaned on the dresser. "Why did you pull guns on us?" She demanded.

Francis' mind worked to connect her face to a location, and he concluded that she was the girl from the rooftop; which meant that, somewhere, the man from the rooftop was lurking around.

Francis rose to a seated position. The woman tensed at this, but didn't raise the pistol. Nevertheless, Francis chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"You're scared of me." Francis felt his bite wound flare up. He pondered telling this broad that he was going to turn any minute. He decided to hold off on that information awhile longer. What'd she ever do for him?

"You didn't answer my question."

Francis sighed. "My gang was supposed to meet here. I saw a couple of their corpses downstairs and... I guess I went a little crazy. I don't know why I thought a couple of kids like you two could take on the Legion."

The girl darkened at that. "You have no idea what we've been through."

"Actually, sister, I think I have a pretty good idea. Now, this interrogation thing is cute and all, but can I have my guns back?"

"Not yet. Not till we figure out what to do with you."

Francis struggled slowly to his feet with a pained groan. Joints popped all over his body. The girl was immediately tense, her pistol raised. "You sit back down or I'll shoot!"

He had seen her type before. This wasn't the first time some chick had pulled a gun on him; two years ago, he had been stealing a television from some family's home. A middle-aged woman came downstairs and held a gun on him. He walked right out of that house, television in hand, while she just stood there holding the gun. He doubted this was much different.

"I've had enough sitting down!" He retorted. "Or did you forget that there's a vampire apocalypse outside? Now, can I have my gun?"

He held out his hand. Her finger, previously resting on the trigger guard, now moved to the trigger. "I may have stitched you up, but I have no problem blasting new holes into you!"

He stepped back again, hands in the air, second thoughts in his head. "Have it your way, kid." She wasn't a hard woman – her eyes betrayed fear, tension, and battling emotions, and he knew that she wouldn't carry through on her threat without a great deal of guilt and remorse. However, he could also tell that she was strung out. She'd tasted grief and despair, she'd been through the wringer, and she'd probably done her fair share of bad things to ensure her own survival. Sure, she'd feel bad about killing him, but she'd probably do it nonetheless. And as far as Francis was concerned, her hurt feelings weren't worth gambling the last minutes of his pre-vampire life on. He was still curious how the other side lived.

Heavy footsteps echoed from down the hall. The girl relaxed again. "That'll be the Cavalry," she informed Francis as the steps grew louder. She turned to the open doorway. "What the hell took you so-"

Instead of her black partner, however, a shambling corpse emerged through the open door and lunged at her. The girl let out a surprised grunt, and then it was on her. The two of them grappled against each other – the thing tried to bite her neck, while she brought her pistol up under its chin and squeezed the trigger. Blood sprayed against the roof of the room, and the thing fell on its back.

Francis heard more footsteps storming down the carpeted aisle; a lot more. The girl hurried out into the hallway and then muttered a curse. "Change of plans," She called into the room. "Have your guns back!"

She tossed him the pistol she was holding, and then drew another one from a hip holster and started firing into unseen enemies down the hall. She loosed off a dozen shots before rushing back into the room, slamming the door shut and bracing her back against it. Bodies slammed against the door from the other side a split second later.

"How many are there?" Francis demanded.

"A lot!" The girl grunted.

"How much ammo you got?"

"Not enough."

"Where's my shotgun?"

"The roof."

"Are you fucking joking? I'm starting to hate you, girl!"

The woman glared at Francis across the room. Her face was scrunched with the effort of holding the door back, and sweat beaded her forehead. "The feeling's mutual!" She yelled. A zombie fist punched through the door beside the girl's head and grabbed a fistful of her hair. Francis loosed a few bullets into the opening, and the hand released her. She acknowledged the help with another grunt, but more hands were reaching through the hole, and the door was cracking in other places. "Got any ideas?" She screamed over the moans, grunts, snarls and growls of the undead on the other side of the portal.

"I might!" Francis picked up a chair and threw it through the hotel window. He leaned out of the shattered portal, staring down. It was a dizzying drop to the bottom. No escape that way. He looked back over his shoulder at the girl. "Wait, did you say 20th floor?"

"I can't hold this door!" She screamed. The portal splintered all the way down, and more holes were being torn in it to the point where it less resembled a cohesive object and started to look more like a jigsaw puzzle, individual pieces collapsing off of it in rapid order. Hands reached in, grabbing hold of the woman, pulling at her, tearing at her. She continued to grunt, straining with all her might, not only keeping the door shut at this point but also practically keeping it together. Francis fired bullets swiftly into the gaps, trying to stave off the groping, clawing hands that were attacking the woman who was – for the time being – the only obstacle between himself and those for whom he would be breakfast.

The door shattered, and the woman disappeared in a pile of tackling vampires with a scream. Francis fired the rest of his bullets into that pile. At that moment, a deafening beeping sound chimed through the hotel. Seemingly as one, all of the undead got up off the woman and bolted through the doorway toward the sound.

Francis helped her to her feet. A second later, the woman's black friend stood in the doorway, eyes wide. "We gotta get out of here!" He yelled to them, over the _BEEPBEEPBEEP _of the fire alarm. "Follow me!"

The black man noticed Francis then for the first time, and hesitated. Francis straightened to his full height, half a head taller than the other man. This was the first time the two of them had been face to face since the incident on the rooftop. Now they were faced off again, both with pistols in their hands. Francis knew his own weapon was empty – he had only intimidation to rely on. He tensed unconsciously, causing his muscles to flex. In addition to being taller, he had at least forty pounds on the black man who, judging by his style of dress and lean physique, was a bit of a pretty-boy.

The black man glanced once to the pistol in Francis' hand, then to the woman. She nodded to him, almost imperceptibly, and he nodded back. Without another word or question he bolted down the hallway with her behind him. Francis followed. They ran to the elevator and Louis hit the **LOBBY** button. The doors closed, and Francis' auditory world was confined to classical music, heavy breathing, and the reloading of weapons.

"Where the hell were you?" The girl demanded through her heavy gasps.

"When that horde came, I ducked into one of the rooms! They went straight for you, Zo, just like those other ones did with those survivors last night! It's like they knew you were there!"

"Shit. Radar zombies are the last thing we need! That fire alarm; was that you?"

"Yeah, I remembered that thing the wall message said – the thing about them being sensitive to pitch."

"Woulda been better if the alarm exploded after," Francis grumbled; his first contribution to the conversation. The woman glared at him reproachfully.

"You're welcome," The black man replied, although he looked thoughtful. "Name's Louis. This is Zoey."

"Francis." He wasn't sure yet if he liked either of them, the black man or the young woman. He had to hand it to them, though; they seemed to be a good team. Zoey had kept her head in the face of that horde – when they came at her, she literally planted her feet and took it on. No man in Francis' gang could claim to having done that. And Louis... the horde had missed him completely. He could have snuck past them and gotten out of Dodge easy enough – and if it was any member of Francis' gang in that situation, that's exactly what would have happened. Instead, though, Louis had devised a plan and come back for his friend. That sort of team dynamic was completely alien to Francis, who had swallowed the exhaust from the Legions' bikes as they left him behind to deal with the pack that had unseated him yesterday.

He knelt down and picked up the shotgun lying near Tanya's corpse. She had been a good girl – vulgar, abrasive, and scrappy as hell. He grunted a goodbye to her as he loaded up his new weapon. Neither of the other two survivors said anything about him arming himself at this point, as if by some unspoken agreement they had both decided to incorporate him into their group – at least temporarily. That degree of trust softened Francis up toward them.

"You handled yourself well back there, kid." He said to Zoey. "Maybe I don't hate you so much after all."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Well, the list of things I don't hate is pretty short."

The elevator doors opened, and the trio walked onto the landing that overlooked the hotel. Everything down below was just as grisly before, although in the daylight it seemed to appear more mundane – the nightmarish scene was more tragic than horrible now. Louis and Zoey exchanged a look – Francis had no way of knowing what they were thinking, but their glance seemed bittersweet, and then the trio walked down the stairs and headed toward the door.

"I'm gonna miss this place," Zoey sighed as they stepped through the door and passed under the red awning. Francis looked down at the young, dead biker nearby – Maggot, the group's newest inductee and Tanya's plaything. When she fell off her bike, he went against the whole Legion's philosophy – Every Man For Himself – and peeled off after her. He was a good kid; brave and bold, but extremely naive. Ultimately, he was probably a poor fit for the Legion.

"Now that I know there are _that_ many zombies in there..." Louis shook his head. "Good riddance, Morpheus Hotel. Besides, we really – _really_ – need to find some ammo." He stared at his pistol. "I'm down to my last clip, and it isn't full."

"I've got an extra clip," Zoey reported.

Francis reached into a pouch on his belt, feeling a fistful of shotgun shells. He then ran his hand over his pistol holster, which held three loops filled with pistol clips. He sighed.

".45's or .38's?" He asked.

".38's." Louis replied. Francis pulled two of the clips out, and handed them out to the other two survivors.

"Thanks, man!" Louis exclaimed. Francis growled at him. "Don't mention it. Now we're even." With that, he turned and started walking down the road, away from the other two – _limped_ was a better term for it, he supposed. His ankle was still killing him, although he had to admit he felt much better after being bandaged up and resting for a little while. The morning sun shone down on him, and while the breeze was cold, the air was extremely fresh and balmy after being cooped in that stale hotel of death. _Damn it,_ he thought, _I'm starting to feel optimistic. _He never much liked optimism; most of his personality was built around cynicism and negativity. Hopefulness was a gateway to complacency, and he didn't want to devolve into some fat 9 to 5, pencil-pushing geek like the two survivors he was currently walking away from. Live fast, and die hard. That was the only way to go about life, and it worked out pretty well for him so far. All their money and class couldn't help those white-collared, muffin-topped sheep in the face of the Vampire Apocalypse. The Hell's Legion were gladiators in a grisly arena of death, and Francis couldn't possibly keep track of how many suit-and-tie men and pantsuited bitches he'd put down in the last forty-eight hours.

So he thought of things that made him angry. _For one, I just gave half my ammo to a couple green kids._ That wasn't entirely true – he likely wouldn't miss two magazines, with the amount of shells he still carried. _Two – I'm still going to miss the party of a lifetime_. The Legion wasn't at the Morpheus; in fact, he couldn't even hear their bikes in the distance. Either they were on the other side of the city, or they were all dead. _Three – I'm going to turn into a vampire_. This one frustrated him to no end – he should have been converted about eight hours ago now. It was the _waiting_ that was driving him insane. He was starting to think he might not turn at all. _Dammit, _he thought to himself. _There's that fucking optimism again_.

"Where are you going?" Zoey called after him. Without turning around, he called back, "None of your business."

"You're just gonna leave?" She persisted.

"Why not?" He demanded.

"You're a good shot. We could use you."

"I'm charmed. Have a good life!"

Someone put a hand on his shoulder, and he halted. "If you don't take that hand off me," he growled, "I'm breaking it."

"Easy, man," it was Louis. "Do you really want to go off alone again? Don't you miss having a gang to watch your back? To provide covering fire for you? To save your ass in times of need?"

Francis' frown deepened. The Legion did none of those things. They were a fraternity that liked getting drunk and looking tough in numbers, but when the shit hit the fan they tended to scatter like cockroaches. The closest thing he ever got to _covering fire_ during his time in the gang was when Bobby mistook a cop arresting Francis to be a guy who owed him money, and he punched the officer in the face. Francis bolted, while Bobby got five years (shortened to one for good behaviour, i.e. Bobby being too afraid to cause trouble with the murderers and rapists he was serving time among).

"I cover my own ass,"

"Leave him, Lou."

Francis turned around and took a last look at the other survivors. Louis' arms were crossed. Zoey had a hand on her hip, and her pistol hung lazily in her right hand. Francis' eyes swept over her. He had to admit, she was the most attractive woman he'd seen since the world ended. _At least the most attractive BREATHING woman,_ he amended mentally. The Legion had the good fortune to ride past Buster's Burlesque Theatre the other day – even grey skin and dead eyes couldn't detract from _that_ gorgeous ambush, which distracted Bobby right into an early grave.

Zoey saw his eyes roaming over her, and though she managed to retain her hard stare, Francis noticed that her face was flushing. _No,_ he mused, _I don't hate her. I don't like her yet, but I sure don't hate her_.

"I'm going to the cop shop." Francis finally said, breaking their silence. "I rode past it the other day, and saw that it had been overrun, but most of the vampires have since split. I'm not normally the type to break _into_ a jailhouse, but I'm pretty sure they'll have guns – lots of guns. You two can tag along, if you want."

Zoey and Louis exchanged glances. "We _do_ need the guns." Louis mused.

"Yeah, we also need a place to go." Zoey remarked. "Right now we're two bored people in a hostile city with absolutely nothing to do. Unless you have any other escape ideas?"

With a sigh, Louis craned his neck to look up the side of the Morpheus. "None that don't involve rooftops and helicopters."

"Alright, Lou, let's go get us some guns!"


	9. Day 9 pt 3 - The Precinct

Together, the trio walked down the road, weaving past corpses and cars both crashed and abandoned, stepping over litter and broken glass. They didn't get far before encountering more Infected. Francis noticed that, instead of attacking them with a balls-out scream and a hail of gunfire like he would've done, Louis and Zoey tended to avoid the vamps when possible, and make as little noise as they could in their presence.

During the walk, Zoey recounted their tale of the horde they encountered the previous day: she explained the way that it seemed to operate with a hive mind, and she described in detail its multi entry-point breach of the other survivors' safehouse. She then mentioned how the Infected were attracted to pitch, and how sometimes they seemed to enter a dormant "sleep" state. She underlined this example by pointing out two men just leaning against a nearby brick wall, barely moving. The survivors moved past this decaying duo completely undisturbed. They had a few minor altercations on the road, but were as conservative with bullets as they could possibly be. On numerous occasions, Francis opted to take out stragglers with a shotgun-butt to the skull. He could tell that the other two were impressed both with his physical strength and with his willingness to get up-close and personal with these monsters.

They reached the police station in only an hour, and by then it was mid-morning. The sun was warmer than it had been earlier, but some dark clouds threatened to overtake it soon. The police station was an old-fashioned cubic building surrounded on three sides by a large parking lot. Large windows ringed the face of the brick building, although many of these were boarded over from the outside. A barricade had been erected in front of the precinct. It mostly consisted of squad cars parked in a ring around the front entrance. The gaps between the cars were filled in with sandbags. Corpses absolutely littered the parking lot. The last stand of Fairfield's law enforcement had been an epic one.

"Precinct 8 on Granville Street," Louis seemed to recite.

"God, that poor woman," Zoey muttered.

"Guess she should have tried her luck at Falkner," Louis replied.

Francis didn't know or care what they were talking about. He crossed the parking lot, stepping over literally dozens of corpses on his way. There was very little exposed pavement, due to the sheer number of the undead that had been felled.

"Be careful," Louis advised the other two, walking slightly ahead of Zoey. "If any of these things have any fight left in them they might try to get a bite in!"

Francis was still unsure how well he liked Zoey, but he knew for a fact that he disliked Louis. The man was everything that Francis normally disliked in human beings; he was one of those pencil-necked dweebs who sat at a desk for twelve hours a day and measured his success in money. He was one of those people who didn't glance twice at Francis' type in the street, except at night when he crossed to the opposite side of the road and pulled out his phone, 9-1-1 at his fingertips. Spent his work time at a desk, and then went home to sit on a couch and watch TV or read books for the rest of his day, and yet he judged people like Francis for their lifestyle choices. And the only time he ever got off his ass to do anything real, anything _solid_ and free from cyberspace, was when he hit the treadmill to polish his gym bunny physique. In addition to that, he had his insufferable _optimism_. He had clearly lived a clean, sheltered life, distant from the raw, grimy, unpolished world. The _real_ world.

Francis, on the other hand, measured his accomplishments in the things he did, not the things he owned. He was boosting radios and copper wire for cash when he wasn't doing manual, off-the-record labour, and he spent his time and money in the bar talking to real people. The closest he ever got to any kind of simulated reality was when he drank too much – and for a man built like Francis, that didn't happen often. He'd never been in an expensive, air-conditioned gym. His abdominal workout was sitting a bike, and his bicep workout was punching some jackass in the face over a slight real or imagined. He didn't jog – he _sprinted_ from any conflict he didn't think he would win, especially those involving the police.

In addition to Louis' lifestyle irking Francis, the biker was also sensing an unmistakeable sense of distrust coming from Louis. The black man rarely spoke to Francis directly during their hour-long trek to the Precinct. If there was one talent that Francis could claim to have, it was his ability to know when somebody disliked him. Perhaps Louis was still sore about Francis getting the drop on him on the rooftop, when he'd grabbed Zoey up before the other man could react. _That scared the shit out of him_, Francis thought to himself. He knew that the two survivors he was with cared about each other, and had been through a lot together. It didn't seem unlikely that Louis was being territorial; protective. This just pissed Francis off even more. _I saved that girl's ass from getting pounced by a vampire while he was distracted._ He was sure that if he was walking around in expensive clothes, using flowery University language, then Louis wouldn't be as distrustful. _This is that class warfare shit Maggot wouldn't shut up about_.

He hopped over the squad car barricade, looking down at the assorted corpses on the front steps of Precinct 8. Many of them wore the blue of law enforcement officials, and they were all torn to pieces. Death hadn't come easy for them.

The doors had been torn off their hinges. Francis waited at the entrance, glancing back at the other two to see if they were behind him. Louis hurried to Francis' side, and then nodded at the man. Francis grunted a response and the two of them entered at the same time, Francis sweeping left with his shotgun, Louis sweeping right with his pistol. The precinct was well lit by globe lights on brass posts. The reception area had an old-fashioned feel to it, with beige walls and warm lighting. The dead lay all over the floors and desks, and blood was spattered on the wooden benches and the receptionist's desk. Large windows ringed this area, but they had been boarded over. There were five active Infected in this main area. Two of them were on their knees, biting into a police officer. The other three, upon sight of the two survivors, tried to rush them. Pistol and shotgun went off in unison, and soon all of the Infected were dead. The pair walked through a door that read; "**Authorization Required Beyond This Point"**. Behind this door was the common area, where the police worked their desks and processed their cases. It had a more modern look to it – bland, white desks, office chairs and computer monitors, all being illuminated by flickering fluorescents. During the standoff, however, the desks had all been pushed to the edges of the room, leaving a wide open space in the middle where civilians – likely the family members of the officers – had cowered, waiting to die. Women and children, none of them uniformed, lay in the center of the room, within a massive, gory puddle of blood and organs.

Currently, a mass of vampires were crowded around these dead civilians, struggling to feed with grunts and snarls. There were at least fifteen of them in that circle, shoving each other out of the way to get at the feast laid out for them. Louis and Zoey stepped up on either side of Francis. Both of them had gone pale, and looked incredibly nauseous at the sight, but they shakily raised their pistols anyway. Francis cocked his shotgun and whistled loudly. Infected faces rose from their free meal, and over a dozen pairs of eyes hungrily regarded the survivors; blood and guts ran off of jowls as the Infected struggled to their feet. Wordlessly, the three survivors opened fire.

Louis and Zoey had demonstrated an impressive degree of cold calculation in their vampire hunting over the past hour: they didn't waste bullets, they shied away from any fight they could potentially avoid, and they spaced out their shots to ensure maximum accuracy. All of these traits disappeared during this shootout. Louis and Zoey pumped off rounds into the Infected as quickly as they could – the bodies jolted spasmodically, gushing blood before falling back to the ground. Without taking their eyes off their targets, the pair quickly and efficiently reloaded their pistols with the magazines they borrowed from Francis, and spent these as well; all in the time it took Francis to empty his shotgun. Nothing was still standing when they were finished, but bullet holes marked the back wall of the precinct. The pair had missed a lot of shots in their heightened emotional state. While Francis reloaded, the other two paced around the mass of fallen people, kicking the Infected off the bodies of the civilians. Both of them breathed heavily, and tears ran unchecked down Zoey's face. The entire room was filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder.

Francis now knew what the two were capable of when they were pissed off, and he had to admit that he was impressed.

He knelt next to a fallen child, recognizable only by her small size, for all identifiable body parts – arms, legs, torso and, worst of all, parts of the face – had been eaten away. _For one night, _these_ were the ones the cops were trying to protect and serve. Only their families, nobody else_. Francis hated cops. He'd had enough bad run-ins with them to know they made snap judgement calls, and were often high on their own power. However, the idea that they would drop their judicial privileges, grab up their families and hole up for one last stand to protect the ones that they loved... Francis found that he respected the men and women of Precinct 8 a little bit more now. He glanced over at Louis, who was knelt beside a woman cop and bidding Zoey over, as if they knew her.

"My God," Zoey said while the three of them stood in the middle of the room and looked around. "This is horrible."

"Let's just get the guns and get the hell out of here," Louis replied. He was obviously still shaken as he led Zoey away from the desecrated civilians. They spent the next ten minutes searching blue-clad corpses for guns and ammunition. The place was an absolute treasure trove. They found shotguns, pistols of various makes, and a few automatic weapons. Louis stuck with his Uzi, and Zoey opted to pick up a second pistol. Both of them clearly wanted to travel light. They also grabbed First Aid kits from the Precinct's lockers. Francis packed as many pouches with shotgun shells as he could carry, as well as strapping a second shotgun across his back for good measure. He'd had to deal with a few swarms single-handedly, and he knew that reloading was a bitch when vampires were chewing on his shoulder.

Francis was probably even happier to be leaving the precinct than he had been leaving the Morpheus; although he had put on a tough, stoic face while looking down on those massacred civilians, deep inside he had been just as shaken as Louis and Zoey.

His two temporary partners came out of Precinct 8 looking far more haggard than they had when they entered. _I'm the one who hasn't slept in almost two days_, Francis thought to himself, _why are they the ones who look spent_? He knew the answer, of course, and as much as he wanted to write this pair off as weak, he knew that he saw fortitude in them.

The sun had clouded over completely, and a light rain was falling. It felt refreshing to Francis; cleansing. A weak afternoon light still illuminated everything, keeping the shadows at bay and revealing the carnage of the parking lot.

They heard a commotion coming from down the street. Francis squinted, and saw a couple dozen figures climbing out of a building a distance down the street, emerging from doors and windows on numerous floors, and hitting the ground running.

"Shit!" Louis hissed. The three survivors hurried to the squad cars and crouched behind them, ignoring the death and carnage of the corpses all around.

"Think they're coming for us?" Zoey asked.

"That's stupid! How the hell would they know we're here?" Francis snapped.

"They're coming for us." Louis replied. To Francis, he said, "They just _know_, man!"

The horde reached the parking lot, and immediately split into two. One half ran right, in the direction of the Morpheus. The other half ran left, toward the edge of the city. The sounds of their snarls and their slapping feet subsided, and everything was quiet.

Francis started to rise to his feet, but Louis grabbed his arm.

"Don't." He warned.

"If you touch me again, man, I'll-"

"_Francis_," Zoey hissed. Indignantly, Francis squatted back down again. They waited behind the car barricade for a few minutes, saying nothing, only breathing heavily. The city was completely silent. The sour odour of the rotted law enforcement officers turned Francis' stomach. The tattered hems of his jeans were smeared with their blood.

"Whew," Louis muttered, "guess those ones weren't for us." He got to his feet. "Better safe than sorry, though, right?"

"Yeah," Francis stepped up onto the hood of the car, preparing to hop over it. "I'm really happy to have had that exp-"

A vampire snarled behind them, and all three of them turned toward the police station door. A lone Infected ran down the steps toward them. Zoey put a pistol bullet into its head.

"We cleared the station!" Louis cried. "Where the hell did he come from?"

An instant later, the Infected started to pour out of the front door. They practically leapt down the steps, into Louis' and Zoey's faces, before either of them could react.

From the hood of the car, Francis pumped two shotgun rounds into the two vampires nearest Louis. This bought the black man enough time to raise his Uzi and spray bullets into the tidal wave of death that was pouring over Zoey and himself.

Francis reached down and pulled the woman up onto the roof of the car, and Louis backed up toward them, still shooting.

"Fuck! Behind us!" Zoey shouted. Francis glanced over his shoulder, and saw about thirty more vampires running across the parking lot toward them. Zoey knelt down on one knee and fired her two pistols in their direction.

"Reloading!" Louis cried. Francis whirled around and provided covering fire, keeping the vampires off Louis' back just long enough for him to jam a second clip into his Uzi. Louis nodded a _thank you_ and then opened fire on the police station horde again. They had him pinned against the side of the police car, with no place to which he could retreat.

"Reloading!" Zoey yelled, and Francis turned to face the parking lot zombies. They were almost at the barricade now. Francis fired his final shotgun shots into them, and then cried, "I'm out!" Fortunately, Zoey had been given enough time to reload, and she opened fire on the horde again while Francis thumbed shells into his shotgun. At the same time, he monitored Louis' situation.

The black man swung his Uzi, smacking a couple Infected away from him, and then fired a couple bursts into them. Vampires had stopped pouring out of the police station, but there were still at least ten jumping down the steps, and it had been awhile since he had last seen Louis...

"Reloading!" Louis called, and Francis started covering him again. At that moment, though, he heard a predatory shriek – it was a familiar sound, and he immediately remembered the ugly, hooded creature on the rooftop of the Morpheus.

A head was staring down from the roof of the police station. Francis caught it in his peripheral vision, but he was tied up with the vampires surrounding Louis. He seriously considered letting the man fend for himself while he took pot shots at the mutant freak overhead, but for reasons yet unknown to the biker he continued to cover the pencil-neck while Louis pulled a magazine from his pocket. Only three seconds had passed since Louis had shouted, but Francis wanted to throttle the man for taking so long.

The thing shrieked again, but this time the sound travelled as the monster leaped. Francis looked up in time to see the thing's snarling face fill his field of vision, and then it was on him. Francis hit the hood of the car hard, and he heard its windshield shatter from the shockwave. Zoey screamed as she lost her balance and fell off the vehicle, into the parking lot where a dozen vampires converged upon her. Pain worked its way through Francis' body – the force of impact had taken a lot out of him, and now the acrobatic creature – ridiculously strong for its size – had Francis' arms pinned between its squeezing legs. It swiped at the biker, and he felt inhuman claws rake his chest. He screamed for the first time in this apocalypse. "Get it off me! Get it off!"

His right hand side was filled with vampires – Zoey had disappeared beneath them, and they were mauling her. On his left hand side, Louis gave up trying to jam his clip into his Uzi and dropped both items, pulling out his pistol. He turned his back on the Infected that were still converging on him and fired three quick shots into the head of the beast pinning Francis. It fell with a squawk, and Francis was free. The black man turned back around to meet his own threats, but it was too late. A well-built zombie rammed the pencil-pusher into the side of the car, and then pulled him to the ground.

Francis rose to his feet, pulled his second shotgun off his back and fired rapidly into the crowd attacking Louis. He cleared the nearest ones. Louis, still lying on his back, got his pistol up and started shooting into the faces of the last of his horde. "Help Zoey!" He screamed to Francis.

"Obviously!" Francis screamed back, taking umbrage at the fact that the elitist pipsqueak was giving him orders. He jumped into the mass of vampires surrounding Zoey and started swinging his shotgun. Finding the woman lying down in the mass, he stood protectively over her, pushing back the horde that was surrounding them, still at least a dozen strong. Fortunately, he had his back to the squad car.

Vampires bit him and scratched him. He smashed faces in with the butt of his gun, or cracked skulls with well-placed swings. In one or two instances he actually reversed the weapon and used it to shoot things, but for the most part he had no space to do so. Beneath him, Zoey fired her pistols into targets, helping to thin the group out. After about a minute of fighting that felt like an hour, the last of the horde was finished. All told, Louis would later point out, the entire fight had lasted four minutes.

Francis helped Zoey to her feet, and then helped her sit down on the hood of the car. Louis, sore from the mauling he had taken, climbed over the squad car barricade to stand among them. Each of them had taken a harsh beating from the encounter, and they were all bruised and breathing heavily, barely standing.

"Christ," Zoey gasped, "I can't believe we survived that!"

"Told you they were coming for us." Louis told Francis, smiling good-naturedly despite the pain he was undoubtedly in. The biker didn't return the sentiment.

"What the hell took you so long to reload your gun? I almost got wrecked by that fucking Hunter!"

"You barely gave me a second, man!" Louis replied, somewhat taken aback by the biker's aggression. "And after you were pounced, I didn't want to waste time, so I gave up. I had to get that thing off you!"

"That was a dumbass move, dropping your gun like that! In fact, if I hadn't been covering your slow ass I could've gotten that thing myself!"

"So, we're calling them Hunters now?" Zoey interjected, trying to change the subject.

"That's how your gang does it, right? Everyone deals with their own shit, nobody helps each other? Alright, then, next time cover your own ass; see how that works out for you!" Louis snapped darkly, visibly irritated by the biker's reaction. "Look, man, we got out of there in one piece, didn't we?"

"_ 'We got out in one piece,'_ he says. Are you always so fucking positive about everything? _Everyone in this city is dead_!"

"We're still alive, and I know we can stay alive, and if the prospect of not dying upsets you, then you can go jump into the jaws of another of those... Hunter things!"

Francis deposited his shotgun into its holster, and grabbed his spare off the ground. "You know what? I will. I'll do much better without you two vampire magnets slowing me down!"

"Stop!" Zoey screamed, and both men ceased their fighting to look at her. Still leaned against the squad car for support, breathing heavily, bleeding from an ugly gash on her shoulder, she looked ready to collapse. Her eyes were steely, however, and she looked pissed off. "That was the biggest horde we've ever had to take on single-handedly, and _we survived it_. Sure, we barely got by, and we took quite a beating while we were at it, but we made it! You aren't going anywhere, Francis! If this encounter has taught me anything, it's that we need you – and you definitely need us! Look at you, man! Bitten, scratched, beaten... when's the last time you slept longer than an hour? You wouldn't make it off this parking lot on your own! Now, our team dynamic certainly needs work..."

Francis and Louis glared at one another.

"And if more of those Hunter freaks are going to show themselves, we're going to need to learn to call them out! There's a learning curve to this zombie thing, it turns out!"

Both men still had dark faces, but they had calmed down slightly.

"Now," Zoey said, pleased with her ability to defuse the situation, "shake hands and let's get the hell out of here."

Neither man moved to shake hands. Louis merely shook his head and said "Know when to quit, Zo." Both men smirked, however, as they helped the woman to her feet.

"You want First Aid?" Louis asked.

"I think we could all use it pretty soon," Zoey replied, "But let's find a place to hole up for a few hours or so. Francis needs to get some sleep, and then we can figure out a plan."

"I heard they're evacuating people across the river," Francis said, "at least, that's what the Legion was saying the other night. We were going to go there and ship ourselves out if this apocalypse ever got boring."

Zoey sighed, "I guess one escape attempt is good as any, right?"

"That's the spirit!" Francis grumbled bitterly, while Louis let the aching woman lean on his shoulder for support. The trio limped down the road, eagerly awaiting their next stop.


	10. Day 9 pt 4 - The University

The sun was setting, and the fog was settling with it. A thick, nigh-opaque mist descended upon the wounded, exhausted survivors, as if the clouds themselves collapsed onto Fairfield. They could see across the street, see the zombies milling about beneath streetlights like moths at a lamp, but everything further on was lost to obscurity.

Not that it mattered to any one member of the trio. They were currently limping toward a nearby apartment building with all the speed they could muster. Behind them, heard but not yet seen, was a small horde of Infected.

Francis reached the door first and kicked it open, stepping aside to let Louis and Zoey in, firing blindly in the direction of the growls. Zoey, first to step into the dark corridor, turned on her flashlight. It illuminated two zombies in the hallway, both of whom seemed to be startled by the irritating light. She shot both of them and then continued down the hall, which terminated in a flight of stairs winding around a landing.

Zoey and Louis reached the landing, where the stairs suddenly turned to the right. Zoey continued up them, to clear the hallway on the second floor. Louis shouted back to Francis, "Come on, man!" A second later, Zoey heard Louis' Uzi sound off. Numerous growls were silenced, and Francis barked, "Fuck! That was right next to my ear, you asshole!"

"Maybe if you weren't so damn slow, Francis, you wouldn't have-"

_BLAM_, Francis' shotgun sounded off, and Zoey heard Louis scream, "Shit, Francis! God dammit, I'm deaf!"

"Yeah, not so fun, is it?"

Zoey walked past locked doors, listening to the bickering behind her, which was interlaced with gunfire as the two men worked to fight off the horde that was bottlenecked in the downstairs hallway. Zoey finally found an unlocked door, and pushed it open tentatively, glancing back down the hallway toward her friends. They had backed up to the top of the steps, still firing down at the approaching horde. Louis had switched to his pistol and was firing slow, conservative headshots into the nearest Infected while Francis quickly thumbed shells into his shotgun.

Zoey entered the dark room, and swept it with her flashlight. Empty. She checked rooms, finding no Infected. In the bathroom, however, she saw a bottle of pain pills beside the sink. She picked them up, reading the dosage. _**Adults – take two pills a day, or as directed by a physician**_**.** She popped two pills with a grimace, waiting for them to take an effect on her sore body and stiff, overtaxed, wounded legs. When nothing happened after thirty seconds, she popped two more. Then she pocketed the rest of the pills and hurried out to her friends.

"Zoey!" Louis was calling as she stepped outside. The two men had retreated halfway down the hallway, still firing into the relentless horde that was coming at them.

"Covering fire!" Zoey yelled back, firing both pistols into the horde while her two companions took the time to reload their main weapons. By the time both her guns were empty, Louis and Francis were firing again.

"We've gotta get out of here!" Francis shouted. "Zoey, you see a way out back there?"

"There was a fire escape on the east side!" Louis shouted back over the gunfire. "I saw it!"

"Which way's East?" Francis asked.

"Left! Left!" Louis answered, putting a bullet through the skull of a zombie that had grabbed his shoulder. The horde was on them now, and it was all they could do to keep them at bay.

"Then cover me!" Francis yelled, putting his shoulder down like a linebacker and charging into the nearest door. To pick up his slack, Zoey started firing her weapon alongside Louis. Francis bulled through the nearby door with a crash. "Here it is!" He called back to them. "Come on!"

Louis and Zoey backed into the room, still shooting. Francis put a shotgun shell through the nearest window, and the three of them stepped out onto the fire escape. Once again, Francis let Zoey take the lead up the steps. Louis gestured to him. "Go up, man! You're almost out!"

Francis nodded, and followed Zoey up the steps. Louis took the rear, firing two more Uzi bursts into the horde behind him before pulling out his pistol and unloading it onto them. Zoey, on the upper level, fired down at them with her two pistols. "Come on, Lou!"

Louis bolted up the steps, zombies hot on his tail. The three survivors climbed up two more levels to the rooftop. Zoey, reaching the top first, turned around to pick off the zombies that were dogging Louis.

"There's too many of them!" Louis yelled.

"Shit, we've got nowhere to go!" Zoey cried, looking around the bare roof.

"Good plan, Louis!" Francis shouted, as Louis reached the rooftop and dove out of the way of Francis' shotgun blast – which took out the zombie that was about to bite the black man.

"Hey! I didn't say anything about the roof!" Louis retorted, rolling onto his back and firing into the nearest two zombies before scrabbling to his feet again.

Zoey jogged the perimeter of the roof, looking down for someplace – anyplace – that they could go. The north side of the building gave way to the street, which was so far down that only the light of the street lamps were visible in the fog. Ditto for the west side, while on the east they were greeted with the brick facade of an even taller building, upon which it would be impossible to jump. On the south side, however...

"There's a tree!" Zoey yelled.

"What?" Louis replied.

"A tree! About two floors down!" Zoey could see the top of a tree in the fog – it was a leafy maple, or something of the sort. It was standing behind a tall, brick wall that was topped with deadly looking barbed wire. It was a long jump over the potentially deadly wire, and a dangerous landing, but so far it seemed to be their only option.

"Get off! Get off!" Louis screamed, smashing in the face of a zombie woman who had grabbed his shirt in her hands. More zombies were converging on him – he was practically overwhelmed. Francis had his own problems, swinging his shotgun madly and striking down zombies that tried to surround him, screaming as he did so. Sweat flew off his body as he did so – the man was clearly on his final blast of adrenaline.

Zoey felt relatively relaxed and clear-headed, and she noted that the painkillers were probably starting to take effect. She could still feel the pain in her body, but it was no longer an urgent sting that demanded her attention – it was more of an objective sensation, something that she was aware existed, but didn't need to cater to quite yet. She bolted to Louis, and shot bullets into the horde that was overwhelming him. He pulled away from the undead with a grateful nod, taking the opportunity to reload his pistol. Zoey screamed, "Help Francis!"

Both survivors shot the zombies in Francis' immediate area, granting him some opportunity to back off. The three survivors retreated to the south corner of the roof, while the area continued to fill with zombies.

"Well, we've got one chance." Zoey sighed, and all three survivors glanced down at the tree.

"No way!" Louis cried, but Zoey was already running. She leaped before she could even think about what she was doing, clearing the walltop and its nasty barbed wire and landing in the tree. Branches cracked beneath her. She smacked her head and back roughly against some stronger branches, but these did little to slow her rapid descent. She reached out with her hands, struggling to grab hold of something, anything, to slow her fall, and then she hit the ground facedown with a hard, extremely painful crash.

She had no time to reflect on her situation, though. She struggled to her feet and limped away from the tree in time for Louis to smash into the ground where she had once been. Francis crash-landed beside him with a painful _crack_ing sound. Louis rose to his feet immediately, albeit stiffly, and scanned the area for Infected while Zoey pulled Francis up. "Come on, man!" She yelled, trying to motivate him, "I'm half your size! Get up!"

The horde behind them, lacking the intelligence or survival instinct to jump into the tree, instead ran straight off the roof. For the most part, they failed to reach the fence. A few, however, managed to impale themselves on the barbed wire, where they writhed furiously. Zoey raised her pistol to finish them off, but Louis put his hand on her arm and shook his head.

Dusting themselves off, the three survivors scanned their surroundings. They were in a grassy courtyard, at the bottom of a hill. They could see very little of the surrounding landscape, thanks to the heavy fog. Zoey recognized it, however. She had seen this grassy meadow and these brick walls before – although they had previously been devoid of barbed wire. "We're at Fairfield University." She said.

"Shit, really?" Louis barked a laugh. "Guess it's been awhile since I last came here!"

"I hate schools," Francis grumbled, rubbing a spot on his back that was apparently still aching. "This one could be an exception, though. Is it defendable?"

"This wall surrounds it," Zoey had only actually been to the university a couple times, since she was only two weeks into the semester when the apocalypse hit. However, she knew that the only entrances were two sets of bronze gates, one on each side of the property. She relayed this information to the others.

"Great, so we might be no better in here." Francis sighed.

"Well, _someone_ put this barbed wire here!" Louis observed. "Either this neighbourhood got a lot worse since I attended, or somebody was manning this place after the infection!"

The survivors ascended the hill, moving slowly and quietly. The mist concealed any potential threats, so they knew they would need to rely on their hearing to anticipate an attack.

They ascended the hill and found themselves looking down upon a path that ran the length of the courtyard. The path was illuminated by lampposts, only the nearest of which were visible. For the most part, the course of the path could only be traced by the white orbs of light that shone through the thick fog. Only a single zombie could be seen, beneath the nearest lantern. It hadn't noticed their presence yet.

_"Hello? Can anyone hear this?"_ A static voice crackled somewhere nearby. "_Can anybody hear this?"_

"Holy shit." Zoey muttered, as the nearby zombie snarled and charged in the direction of the voice.

"Follow that zombie!" Louis hissed, and the two of them hurried after the creature, following the sounds of its growls and its slapping footsteps.

"I don't like this," Francis grumbled, jogging behind but keeping his head up and alert. "Could be a trap!"

"Dude, someone's out there!" Louis retorted incredulously. "They might need our help!"

A second later they found the radio, sitting on a bench beside the path. The zombie was standing over it, snarling in confusion and spinning in circles, looking for the owner of the elusive voice. It spotted the trio and charged them.

Louis and Zoey had taught Francis a lot about zombie killing that morning, and over the course of the afternoon he had returned the favour. Wordlessly, Louis pulled a fishing knife out of a sheath at his side and rammed the blade into the zombie's face. He grimaced as it punctured cartilage, broke bone and sliced muscle, but the Infected man went down easily and silently. He rubbed his knife on the grass before replacing it in the sheath.

"_Hello? Can anyone hear this?"_ The voice sounded rehearsed, as if the man had been repeating the same message for quite some time.

Zoey suddenly felt a twinge of doubt about the radio – perhaps it was the fog, blocking their view of their surroundings. Perhaps it was the radio's location, sitting on a random bench in the middle of the Fairfield University courtyard. _Somebody_ had been here at some point – this much she knew. They would've had to be, in order to put up the barbed wire. Granted, the presence of zombies in the courtyard suggested that any former tenants might have been forced to move out – or worse – but the feeling of trepidation gnawed at her nonetheless.

"Louis..." she started to say, but he had already lifted the radio receiver and pushed the _talk_ button. "I hear you, man!" He cried. "What's up?"

"_ 'what's up' is that I have a sniper rifle trained right on your head, Slim." _The radio man growled. All three survivors heard him load up a clip and cock the weapon, to assuage any doubts of his sincerity. "_And with these infrared goggles on I can see you crystal clear through this fog."_

"Great fucking plan, Louis." Francis cried, slow clapping the man. "I'm gonna count to three. Zoey, I want you to run north. I'll run south. Louis, you distract him!"

Zoey scanned their surroundings, looking for their mystery shooter. She knew that the courtyard was ringed by four buildings, including the dorms, and the man could be in any one of them. She couldn't see past the fog, however.

"Look, man, we're just a few tired survivors passing through!" Louis reasoned. "We don't have anything on us but our clothes and our guns!"

"_The woman."_

Zoey's eyes widened, and the two male survivors' heads swivelled to stare at her incredulously. _I'm a bargaining chip?_ She thought to herself. _Something to be bartered?_

"Fuck that!" Francis shouted.

"You can go to hell with that demand!" Louis snapped, tossing the receiver back on the bench. "So, Francis, that running idea..."

"_Put your hands up right now or I'll shoot you both where you stand!"_

The wording wasn't lost on Zoey: he said "I'll shoot you both". Obviously his eyes were on the men at the moment. He had no intention of harming her... yet. She wondered how they'd react. Louis glanced at Francis. The biker shook his head, and the businessman shrugged. "He has us," Louis conceded. "We may as well do what he says."

"If he lays a fucking hand on Zoey-"

"He isn't doing a damn thing from up in his... tower, or wherever he is. If he comes down here, we'll handle him! Meanwhile, I don't want to get shot!" Louis holstered his pistol and raised his hands. Francis reluctantly strapped his shotgun across his back and did the same.

"_Good,"_ the man said. "_Now, step away from her."_

Zoey's heart thudded. She met both survivors' eyes and nodded, wondering if somebody was going to come hurrying out of the mist and grab her. She placed a surreptitious hand on the butt of her pistol. Would she fight? If she resisted, Francis and Louis could be killed. If she relented, however, her fate would probably be much worse. _Rapists. _The word repeated over and over in her mind, and yet she couldn't bring herself to believe it. Her hand tightened around the pistol, meeting the wide, scared eyes of her two companions. _I'm not going to be a victim,_ she hoped her eyes said. If some stranger came out of the fog and Zoey shot them, it would mean the men's deaths for certain. But if a stranger came out of the fog and she let him take her, then they would probably kill the men anyway, just to tie up loose ends. Louis and Francis nodded at her gaze, as if silently acknowledging this fact.

"_Hey! Woman!" _The receiver buzzed. "_I don't have time for this shit! Pick up the receiver!"_

Feeling terrified and numb, Zoey crossed the path to the receiver. She slowly lifted it to her mouth and depressed the button. "What do you want?" Her voice was flat as she said it.

"_They're unarmed now," _the man whispered to her in a voice that was suddenly soft and reassuring. "_You're out of their reach. Say the word now, and I can put both of them down before they can take a step toward you."_

"WHAT?" Louis exclaimed.

"_MAKE A MOVE, SLIM!" _The man challenged.

"No!" Zoey cried. "They're my friends! Leave us alone!"

"_Is that what you want?"_ The man asked.

"Yes," Zoey whispered. "Just let us go."

"_You got it!"_ The man exclaimed, almost amicably. "_Alright, guys, you're free to go! Follow this path, the way you were going, and it'll take you to Baker Building. There's a cafeteria on the far end with some decent food, just watch out for the freaks! I cleared it out this morning, but those things are like ticks – you miss one and the place is full of 'em again in an hour!"_

"What the hell?" Louis cried, puzzled, as he put his hands down. "He isn't shooting us?"

"_Oh, and sorry about all that..." _The man continued. His voice went sombre. "_These days, you can't be too careful with drifters. Travel up the road a bit... you'll see what I mean. Goodnight, and God bless."_

The three survivors traveled down the path a few feet when they saw what the radio man was talking about: three corpses, two men and a woman, lay beside the path. The woman had a sheet draped respectfully over her. The men looked like they were left as they fell. One of them had his pants around his ankles and a bullet in between his shoulder blades. The other one had a bullet in his chest, and his own buckle was undone.

_Can't be too careful..._

Zoey glanced at her friends, and then crossed to the corpse beneath the sheet.

"Don't," Louis warned, but she ignored him, pulling the sheet off the woman's face. She was an Asian woman in her mid-thirties, and to judge by her features she didn't look like she had been a zombie. Death itself couldn't smooth the lines of anguish on the female's features, and it was immediately clear to Zoey that this unknown woman's death had not come to her easily. The radio man's soft, reassuring tone in her ear suddenly made more sense to her. _They're unarmed, you're out of their reach. Just say the word._ The Asian woman's throat was slit, a deep gash that stained the sheet under which she lay. Had the radio man's intentions been less noble, this could have very well been Zoey.

Wide-eyed, in shock, she replaced the sheet over the woman's head. She'd never considered – seriously considered – the depths to which humanity would sink during this Apocalypse. She'd never reserved much fear for humans in the past couple days, she was so busy dealing with the zombies.

Together, Louis and Francis softly touched her shoulders and led her toward Baker Building, which now loomed through the fog. She nodded a _thank you _to both of them. _Perhaps it's for the best that I never considered the possibility of rape, _she thought to herself, _if I lived with that fear and distrust, would I still have taken in Francis? _Up on the Morpheus rooftop, when he was unconscious, she'd been his main advocate. Louis – in that way of his – was more afraid for her well-being than she herself was.

"You okay?" Louis asked her as they entered the building, coming out of the cold and into a wide hallway. The door slammed shut behind them, and in that moment three zombies rushed out of a nearby classroom. Zoey was first to react, and with six shots put all three of them down.

"Yeah," Francis nodded, "She's fine. Let's go grab some food!" He pointed at a sign hanging off the roof. "Sign says the cafeteria's this way!"

"You surprise me yet, Francis," Louis marvelled, taking the back of the procession as the three navigated the hallways. "I had no idea you could read."

Zoey smiled at the quip. She saw Francis scowl, but wondered if he was actually angry or not. She was starting to get the impression, over the last couple hours, that Louis and she were actually starting to grow on the stoic man. The pair still exchanged insults and put-downs on a constant basis, but they seemed to have become less adversarial – or so she liked to think. And when the radio man had singled Zoey out, back when the three of them thought he was taking her away, Francis had been the loudest opponent – a move that surprised her, considering his Every Man For Himself motto.

There were corpses all over the hallways – dead ones, not the walking kind. The radio man had been busy. There was still the occasional walker as well, though, but for the most part the trio met no opposition. They met their greatest obstacle in the cafeteria – twelve zombies. Nevertheless, with some careful positioning and timing, they managed to dispatch this threat quickly and cleanly, without spilling any gore onto the food or appliances.

Using her knowledge of fry cookers from some past jobs she'd worked, Zoey whipped the team up an extravagant dinner of French fries, hamburgers and sodas. Louis and Francis watched her work from across the counter, eyeing the process in wonderment as Zoey glided from burner to burner with practiced ease, using an efficiency that had been drilled into her. It was clear that neither of them had worked in fast food in their lifetimes.

No words were spoken while they all ate – there was simply no time between bites. The trio slaughtered the food with a ravenous haste, as if expecting their meal to be interrupted at any moment. Fortunately, that wasn't the case, and soon they were walking the dark, deserted halls of the school.


	11. Day 9 pt 5 - Chemistry

_Sorry for the long gestation time between chapters, exam time and other such excuses. I'm also extremely paranoid when making dialogue-heavy chapters that the dialogue will suck/ not match the characters. I'll try to be a bit more regular, especially since we're nearing the final few chapters._

Only one in every three fluorescent lights was on – the school had still been open when the virus hit, but classes had probably been over, and the only people still in the building would have been faculty and late-night studiers. The radio man had been right when he said that the Infected were like ticks – there were quite a few fallen corpses in the hallways of the lower floors. While a lot of them were clearly university students, kids in their twenties with peculiar senses of fashion, there were also various other types of people splattering the walls – a nurse here, a homeless person there, all of them grey and mottled.

"We should find the chem lab," Zoey suggested, "I remember it had those thick, fireproof doors, and it'll have some spare First Aid and blankets!"

The trio moved up to the Chemistry Labs, which Zoey recalled were on the third floor of the building. On the way, they quickly stopped at a washroom they passed, each individually doing their business and then washing their hands and face. As Zoey looked at herself in the mirror, she noticed that she was covered in blood, her eyes hard and unrecognizable. Using a massive wad of paper towels, she wiped all of the blood off her face and neck.

The Chem Lab the trio chose was a large room, with numerous tables. Each table was propped up against a counter, and on each countertop was a sink. Each desk had a Bunsen Burner resting atop it. There were two fire blankets in emergency boxes on the wall. They were heavy, itchy and thick, catered as they were for the asphyxiation of fires and not the comfort of drifters. Still, they kept the survivors warm. The Chem Lab door was thick, as Zoey knew the walls were – the room was designed to contain a fire or explosion, if need be. As far as classrooms went, it would be relatively zombie-resistant. Narrow windows looked out on the courtyard, but currently the fog was too thick to see much of anything past the hazy light of the lampposts.

"We'll sleep in shifts," Louis said. "Somebody should always be awake."

Zoey thought of the previous night, spent in the hotel. Hell, even _that_ had seemed like a lifetime ago at this point. Things almost seemed simpler yesterday – there were no Hunters, there seemed to be fewer wandering hordes, and Zoey hadn't yet considered the possibility of rapists. _Yes_, she thought to herself with a sigh, _it was a simpler time of zombie slaying_.

"I'll take first watch." Francis proclaimed.

"You're practically asleep on your feet, Francis," Zoey replied. "I'll take it. You can have second."

The biker truly did appear tired, and Zoey didn't blame him – he hadn't slept since the Morpheus, and back then it had been less of a sleep and more of a... trauma-induced lapse of consciousness.

"I doubt I'll get much rest," Francis grumbled, taking off his vest and rolling it up as a makeshift pillow. Zoey pulled the pill bottle out of her pocket. "Here, take some of these." she tossed it to him. He caught it, and then popped a small handful of pills into his mouth and dry swallowed them. "What are they?" He asked afterward.

"For pain. Non-drowsy."

The biker was asleep before she could even finish the sentence. She looked over at Louis, who shrugged.

"Well, I guess you'd better get some sleep, too."

Louis loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt – _his version of relaxed_, Zoey thought to herself, though this was certainly a different picture of Louis than she had gotten last night...

She banished the alcohol-induced events of last night from her mind, before her face had a chance to flush. Louis was seated with his back resting on one of the counters, rolling his sleeves up. His gun rested on the floor beside him. "Don't leave the room," he advised Zoey. "Not while we're asleep. We can't go anywhere alone anymore."

"Don't worry, Lou, I won't." Zoey sat down on a desk and pulled off her hoodie. She opened a First Aid kit and started bandaging herself.

"I mean it," Louis repeated. "I don't want anything to happen to you. And that man out there – the one on the radio... you know, I never even considered-"

"Neither did I," Zoey muttered, "can we not talk about it?"

The two sat in relative silence, while Francis snored nearby. Louis nodded to him. "He's tough, I'll give him that."

"I feel good about him, Lou. I feel a lot safer having him around."

A pained look crossed Louis' face, and Zoey sighed silently. _Men_. "I mean having a third member with us." She said, to preserve his ego.

Louis groaned. "I want to trust him, but I can't – and I know this is going to sound like some petty, territorial man thing, but we know nothing about him."

"We know he doesn't like you very much," Zoey said in jest, but Louis didn't smile. "Yeah," he replied. "He's been very vocal about that. We also know that he spent the first day of this disaster riding with his gang, causing chaos. He was making things _worse_."

"I think things were as bad as they were going to get on Day One, Lou!" Zoey admonished. "He's an extra gun, and we really need that if we're going to get out of this city alive!" _But he's more than that,_ she thought to herself, _he's one of us now. I feel it, even if Louis doesn't._

"Here," Louis rose to his feet, and took the bandages from Zoey's hands, wrapping her torso for her despite her objections. "I'm not saying we should send him packing. He's a good shot. He stuck with us through a lot of bad shit. And he knows how to deal with zombies. I'm just not ready to put my life in his hands just yet. Remember his motto: " 'Every Man For Himself.' "

Their faces were inches from each other as Louis worked the bandage, tying it tightly around her body. "This is going to hurt." He tugged, to make sure the bandage was as tight as it could get. She hissed, clasping his wrist in her hands. "Fuck!"

Louis patted her hand while she rolled her tank top over the bandage. "This might sound crazy," She whispered, looking at the sleeping biker, "but I think he's coming around to our way of things. He could've walked when that man on the radio threatened him. Hell, there were a few times today he could have saved his own skin at our expense. Remember the convenience store safe house?"

Louis winced. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember it – and 'safe' house is a loose way of describing it."

"If he hadn't lit that Molotov when he had, we would all be zombie food right now. And he literally lifted me through that skylight." Zoey thought back to their eventful afternoon. "He could've been out of there scot-free if he didn't stay behind to pull us out."

"Yeah, he's a real hero," Louis muttered, and Zoey thought to herself, _he's threatened. This is some of that male posturing bullshit, the stuff I slept through during Psych_.

"That sounded harsher than I meant it," Louis amended, "You're right – he hasn't actually done anything to us – yet. Innocent until proven guilty. And I'm pretty sure if he hasn't shot us in the back by now, he's never going to. He was a criminal, though, and old habits don't die just like that! Yeah, he's played hero a couple times today, but what if he reaches a point where being the hero stops being fun? Where he realizes he isn't going to be applauded and given key to the city for putting himself on the line?"

"Two people are a team," Zoey muttered, recalling her schooling. "Three people are a community, with all its downsides."

"What's that?" Louis asked.

"Something my professor once said to me. He was talking about how people tend to trust each other more in a pair – they're open, they can be themselves, and say what they want. Once a third person gets thrown into the mix though, it becomes a competition. Two against one, with all three of them competing to not be the one."

"Paging Dr. Freud?"

"Come on, Lou, hear me out. I know I'm the man in the middle in this group, so to speak. I've been the go-between with you guys all day. Please don't turn this zombie crisis into some kind of tug-of-war."

Louis let out a humourless laugh. "You think I'm threatened by him? He's going to swoop in and take my woman away to his cave? That sort of thing?"

"I don't think it's as simple as all that – and I _know_ you don't see me as some sort of possession. You've made that perfectly clear over the past few days, and I can't thank you enough for it. I'm just saying that we had a good dynamic going before, and I don't want any fear of losing me to hurt your opinions of Francis. You're my friend, Louis. At this point, you might even be my only friend."

Louis winced again – harder this time – at the thought of Philadelphia. Zoey didn't notice. She went and sat next to him. The man smelled like sweat and blood, but she didn't notice over her own musk.

"You should probably get some sleep." Zoey whispered to him. "Francis will wake you up when it's your turn to watch."

"Keep alert, Zoey, and if anything happens-"

"Nothing will. I think we're safe – relatively at least."

"That's what you said at the store."

"Francis had no idea that cash register was alarmed. I don't think he'll make that mistake again." Zoey waited for his reply, but there was none. Louis was asleep, propped up against the counter, his head lolled back uncomfortably. She eased him to the floor and put one of the fire blankets over him, and then started her watch.

* * *

Francis was roused out of the best sleep of his life a few hours later.

"Get Louis to do it!" He moaned. "I changed my mind!"

"We talked about watch order before you went to sleep, Francis. You were there."

"It's not my fault I wasn't listening. When was it decided that I get middle watch?"

"When you triggered that alarm at the store earlier and called that horde down on our rest!"

The biker got to his feet, putting his vest on and grabbing his shotgun. "Wasn't anything good in there, anyway."

"Why did you even bust into that register? What could you have possibly spent the money on?"

"Force of habit." Francis watched Zoey lie down in his sleeping area, resting her head on her bunched up hoodie. She looked back up at him. Her tank top, though slightly discoloured at the armpits and collar from sweat, was still misleadingly clean, protected by her sweater all day. It made him forget for a second that they were in a vampire apocalypse.

"I want to thank you," Zoey said as she tried to get comfortable, "for sticking with me back there with that radio man. You surprised me, what with all your 'Every Man For Himself' talk."

Francis snorted. "Don't get too sentimental, sister. I didn't do it for you."

"Really?" She asked sceptically. "Why'd you do it, then?"

"Just because I have good survival instinct doesn't mean I'm going to let some asshole rape you!"

She propped herself up on her elbows. "Good point. Still, thanks."

"Don't mention it." His eyes strayed down to her cleavage, which was on display given her posture. Catching himself, he met her eyes again. She raised her eyebrows in amusement. "Really?"

"File a complaint, princess."

She sat up, her back against one of the sink counters. "Thanks." She said sarcastically. "So, just out of curiosity, what _did_ you do when you were in that gang?"

"If it'll ease your mind, I'll tell you I've never killed anybody – I've roughed some up, but haven't killed any. I've committed theft, larceny, racketeering, extortion, fraud..." He counted off slowly on his fingers. "At least, that's what the judge tells me! I don't usually keep track."

"Why? Why live like that? Aren't you always running?"

"Riding," Francis corrected. "It's a hard life; but it's intense. My Legion days – I guess they're over now – they were the best! We did what we want, took what we want, and took down anyone who stood up to us! The guys I hung around with were all assholes, but most of them spent so much time in the slammer I hardly even noticed! What about you? How did you guys end up together?"

"Louis and I lived in the same building," Zoey replied. "I shared an apartment with my friend. He was there when things started going bad, and he pulled me out. We've been together ever since."

"And are you two...?" Francis interlocked his fingers, raising one eyebrow. Zoey chuckled. "Really? We're spending the night in Raccoon City and you ask me if I'm single? No, we're just friends. He's a great guy, though. He's saved me tons of times, and he's had my back through all this. Why are you so hard on him?"

Francis thought about it. "He's one of those guys who always has a way out. I know a few guys like him – not many, but some. He shut out everything but work all his life. Worked his way to the top in a short time. Once he got there, though, he realized he'd spent so long working the system, he didn't know how to get out. The way he acts, and talks, the clothes he wears – he doesn't know how to _live. _With him it's all computers, TV, gyms, vacations at resorts – If he ever married, you'd better believe it'd be to a woman with connections! And that fucking, patronizing hope! it's like he's pretending everything's going to be back the way it was, once we leave the city!"

"_That's_ why you don't like him? Because he's optimistic for our future? Because he doesn't believe that the world is ending?"

Francis snorted. "The world isn't ending, sister, and you'd be stupid to believe it is. Guys like Louis see this as the _end of the world_ – no police to keep them safe at night, no leaders to tell them what to do! He's hoping against hope that we'll escape from Fairfield, into the warm hands of the Army, so his life can go right back to normal. Guys like him are insured up the ass for this type of stuff – they make sure the _things _they own are untouchable. He'll get some office job, a nice apartment, and his mapped out life will be back on track. This... _thing_ that happened in Fairfield will just be a hiccup to him."

Zoey flicked a glance over to Louis, still sprawled under the fire blanket, his mouth open and his tie covering his eyes. His silver watch glittered in the weak light.

Francis eased himself into a seated position, so the two of them were level. "All this shit that's happened," he held his arms out, as if gesturing to the world around him, "Things will never be the same, Zoey, trust me. But to me, it's not the end of the world. It's change. He's fighting for his survival, for once." Francis gestured over to Louis. "Guys like me have been fighting their whole life. I can learn to live with vampires. These are monsters I can shoot and kill. Simple problems."

"You might be right," Zoey said, visibly upset. "You're probably right about a lot of that stuff. Yeah, if we get out of here he'll probably be attending board meetings or analyzing IT companies or whatever it was he does! Maybe even within a month of getting back. But that doesn't change who he is as a person. Louis is the most caring, selfless, comforting man I have ever met," She eased herself back into a prone position. "And he was the one who ultimately decided to save your unconscious ass when you were on that rooftop – _after_ you held us at gunpoint and threatened us."

"Really?" Francis didn't know much about their rooftop encounter, apart from what he was conscious for. Basically, Zoey and Louis were waving guns at him one minute, and the next minute he was lying in a bed, being questioned.

"Yes, and you haven't made that decision easy on him since!"

"Christ, I saved the guy's life at the Precinct, and again at the convenience store! What more does he want, a perfumed invitation to my birthday?"

"Francis..."

"Alright! Fine, I'll go a bit easier on the guy. But don't expect me to kiss his ass or anything like that! I think you kids could use thicker skins."

"Fair enough," Zoey stretched her arms out, accompanied by a yawn, before pulling the blankets up to her chest and rolling over onto her side. "Good night."

"Sleep tight,"

"Don't let the bedbugs bite!" She muttered into her hoodie, almost indecipherably. She seemed to be asleep a minute later. Francis sat on what he assumed was the teacher's desk, and began his long, lonely watch.

There was a clock on the far wall that ticked the seconds away audibly. _1:30_, it read. Francis rubbed his tired eyes, wishing he knew the definition of the word "ironic". _I didn't have to follow any damn clocks until _AFTER_ the apocalypse. _He wondered what the other members of the Legion were doing, if they were still alive. Certainly it was more fun than _this_.

Zoey... Francis regarded her. The girl's snoring was misleadingly loud, for someone her size. While Francis had chosen to dislike Louis from the start, Zoey was different. Obviously, he had instantly warmed to her for being a woman, and a sexy one at that. She was unlike any of the barflies Francis had fucked in the past: she was intelligent, for one. She also had a defiant streak that he hadn't seen in any other woman, even the butch Tanya. Although Francis had saved Zoey twice since meeting her, she didn't seem to need too much protection. She'd even bailed Francis out of a couple of jams. She still acted slightly distant around him, though. There were obvious barriers that had to be broken down before he could have anywhere near the relationship with her that Louis had. Strangely enough, though, Francis didn't hold this against Louis. He still held all those other things against Louis, but not this.

_I need to try harder_, he thought to himself. _I don't know how much longer I'm staying with these people, but I'm going to have to do better than this if I want it to work out. _These thoughts were completely alien to Francis; if he didn't get along with a person in his old life, he either abandoned the person or punched them out. He had never, in his active memory, changed himself to suit their needs. He eyed the bite on his shoulder and thought _vampire venom. This is how it begins, with fucking feelings._ He no longer believed he would turn. He was a Carrier, like the other two. A tiny part of him held out hope, though. Vampires didn't have to stay up all night keeping watch.

He heard a _thud_ in the distance, and glanced over at his companions. Both of them were fast asleep. He heard it again; _thud_. _Thud. Thud,_ a deep, rumbling sound. Curious, he crossed to the classroom window.

The fog had eased up considerably, though it was still hard to see anything that wasn't directly beneath the lightposts. Francis saw the nearest post, beneath which stood a vampire. The vampire was stomping around, clearly agitated, as the _thuds_ grew nearer and nearer. Francis could only see the creature's silhouette, but that was all he needed to know that it could also hear the sound, and was equally confused by it.

The vampire broke into a run, disappearing into the mist. Strangely enough, though, it didn't run toward the sound, but away from it. The thudding was really close now, and Francis strained his eyes to try to see through the fog-

A massive silhouette stepped under the lights, and Francis leaped back from the window as if he were electrocuted. It was all he could do not to cry out. The thing was _big_, at least ten feet tall and as many feet wide, and while Francis couldn't make out any details of the creature, he recognized the rippled texture of oversized muscles.

The thing stood there for a few more seconds, and then a large, meaty arm swatted the lightpost. It tore out of its lodging with a crash. The light went out, and the creature was obscured.

Francis' heart was pounding. What the hell _was_ that thing? In the last couple days, he'd seen some pretty horrifying shit – but it was shit he could _handle_. Vampires were only people, after all – dead people. But now he had Hunters to deal with, and, if his eyes were serving him correctly, giants. God damn giants. This apocalypse was turning out to be pretty fucking lame.

"Francis?"

The man visibly started at the sound, and then cursed under his breath. _Louis_.

"WHAT?" Francis whirled around to face the black man, who was now standing up across the room. Louis' face expression showed concern. "Everything alright? I thought I heard something."

_No, everything isn't al-fucking-right. In fact, I think things might have gotten a lot worse for us._ Francis thought this, but didn't say it. Although he only had to look outside at the absence-of-lamppost to know that his eyes hadn't deceived him, he still refused to believe what he'd seen. Instead, he picked up his shotgun, crossed the room to Louis, and thrust it into the black man's hands. "Your watch."


End file.
